The first in a series of stories on Bangladesh and climate migration.

HARINAGAR, BANGLADESH—One by one, the men in Gaurpodomando's family walked out of this mud-caked village and never returned.

First, his uncles went. Both fishermen, they suffered as their catch declined year after year, before they crossed illegally into India to find work in construction. His brothers earned so little fishing that they braved tiger attacks in the nearby Sundarbans forest to forage for honey and timber. Finally, they left, too, and brought their father with them.

Now, Gaurpodomando, who said he is about 35 years old and who goes only by his first name, is the last man in his family still living in the waterlogged village along Bangladesh's Indian border.

His brothers still don't know about the angry tidal flood that burst through a dam and swallowed the family home and dozens of others in September. Those who live here say that between the disappearing fish, brackish floodwaters destroying the rice fields and the ever-fiercer cyclones that seem to inhale entire villages, life is becoming almost unbearable.

But Gaurpodomando, who earns the equivalent of $1.50 a day standing hip-deep in the salty river casting a net to collect shrimp fry, said he is doing everything he can to hang onto his way of life.

"I do feel a little lonely and sad, but I don't really want to go to India," he said, squatting on the outdoor stoop of what was once the family kitchen but is now the only structure left to shelter him, his wife and their two children. His arms and bare feet are streaked with the slate-gray mud that covers the ground and seems never to dry.

'I don't want to leave this country'

"I don't want to leave this place," Gaurpodomando said. "I don't want to leave this country. I love this place."

One day soon, Gaurpodomando and an untold number of others in Bangladesh and around the world may no longer have a choice.

A growing body of evidence, including analyses from military experts in the United States and Europe, supports the estimate that by midcentury, climate change will make vast parts of Africa and Asia uninhabitable. Analysts say it could trigger a migration the size of which the world has never before seen.

Some of the big questions remain unanswered: How many people will really move? Where will they go? How will they go? Will they return?

4 Comments

1. 1. scientific earthling 12:47 AM 3/4/09

   The entire planet needs to adopt China's one child policy. The primary force driving climate change is an overpopulation of homo sapiens and extinction of the other similar sized species not seen as food or pets by homo sapiens. Our planet had over time developed into a bio-diverse balanced system, we are destroying the balance.
   
   To prevent (actually delay) another extinction we all need to act now. Recognise the benefits of biodiversity, far more important than a multi cultural homo sapien planet.
   
   If we don't act evolutionary pressures will restore balance, but it wont be a humane process.

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2. 2. tjams2 in reply to scientific earthling 04:43 PM 3/4/09

   I have an idea...rather than restrict ourselves to one child, how about we limit our maximum age to 35 years and then we are summarily put to death? Hmmm, seems I've heard that story line before. I wonder how mother earth managed to save itself from cataclysmic climate change in eons past.
   
   Climate is ALWAYS changing. Always has, always will. As a result, some areas become uninhabitable and others become habitable. Don't go prescribing vasectomies for everyone. If you believe in anthropogenic global warming, then that means that man-kind was smart enough to change the climate in one direction so we should be smart enough to change it in the other as well right? If you don't believe in it, then what difference does it make what we do either way?

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3. 3. scientific earthling in reply to tjams2 07:08 PM 3/6/09

   It will be almost impossible to get people to agree to terminating their life at a given age, I would happily comply with such a global requirement and donate all my organs to the sick and the rest of my body to science. Asking people to lower fertility is possible. Science can modify microorganisms that reduce fertility, to be non pathogenic. We wont need vasectomies, when you want a baby just take a pill.
   
   Our planet does regulate the environment using feedback mechanisms that is why we exist. Still there have been five major extinctions. We know the fifth could have been a result of a meteorite impact followed by an increase in volcanic activity. Our earth has a thin plastic skin on which we live followed by a molten layer. The impact of the meteorite may have exerted pressure on the molten mass. Liquids cannot be compressed and would try to squeeze out of every nook and cranny; this could be an explanation for the resulting volcanic activity.
   
   Climate has been changing on earth ever since it formed 4+ giga years ago, but change has always been slow, except for some freak events, each of which can be attributed to a cause, some of which are still unknown.
   
   We are now talking about rapid temperature change. Species are becoming extinct at rates greater than that experienced during the fifth extinction (40 K years approx.). Many scientists believe we are in the sixth extinction, I agree. To do nothing is to doom a decent but egocentric species to extinction.
   

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4. 4. jennybr 11:30 AM 1/7/12

   Excellent article !
   
   While the Earth has always endured natural climate change variability, we are now facing the possibility of irreversible climate change in the near future. The increase of greenhouse gases in the Earth?s atmosphere from industrial processes has enhanced the natural greenhouse effect. This in turn has accentuated the greenhouse ?trap? effect, causing greenhouse gases to form a blanket around the Earth, inhibiting the sun?s heat from leaving the outer atmosphere. This increase of greenhouse gases is causing an additional warming of the Earth?s surface and atmosphere. A direct consequence of this is sea-level rise expansion, which is primarily due to the thermal expansion of oceans (water expands when heated), inducing the melting of ice sheets as global surface temperature increases.
   Forecasts for climate change by the 2,000 scientists on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) project a rise in the global average surface temperature by 1.4 to 5.8°C from 1990 to 2100. This will result in a global mean sea level rise by an average of 5 mm per year over the next 100 years. Consequently, human-induced climate change will have ?deleterious effects? on ecosystems, socio-economic systems and human welfare.At the moment, especially high risks associated with the rise of the oceans are having a particular impact on the two archipelagic states of Western Polynesia: Tuvalu and Kiribati. According to UN forecasts, they may be completely inundated by the rising waters of the Pacific by 2050.According to the vast majority of scientific investigations, warming waters and the melting of polar and high-elevation ice worldwide will steadily raise sea levels. This will likely drive people off islands first by spoiling the fresh groundwater, which will kill most land plants and leave no potable water for humans and their livestock. Low-lying island states like Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives are the most prominent nations threatened in this way.“The biggest challenge is to preserve their nationality without a territory,” said Bogumil Terminski from Geneva. The best solution is continue to recognize deterritorialized states as a normal states in public international law. The case of Kiribati and other small island states is a particularly clear call to action for more secure countries to respond to the situations facing these ‘most vulnerable nations’, as climate change increasingly impacts upon their lives.

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