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Amzad Hossain, a US immigrant, recently visited his ancestral locality – Sandwip in Southern Bangladesh from where his family had relocated twice before the devastating cyclone in 1991.
He came here to participate in constructing dam-cum-road and closure surrounding the newly emerged land at Sandwip in the estuary of Meghna under the Bay of Bengal.
Prior to his immigration to US, Amzad’s family resided for two decade in Kalapania, a significant portion of which was lost to the sea.
In the meantime, thousands of people have been displaced from the areas.
Over the last few years erosion has stopped and the new land has sprung up.
Now locals have taken initiative all by themselves to build a two-kilometre road including closure to prevent the newly emerged land from vanishing again.
They have appealed to current and former residents of the area for financial support through the social media.
“Responding to this request, I flew here from as far as New York, trying to help as much as I could, and there are many more like us helping out so that the newly emerged area could be saved,” said Amzad.
A visit to the area last week found dozens of workers digging ditches and filling the road. Some workers were seen lay wooden poles and inserting Geo bags in between the poles filled with sand.
Being informed by the social media, many are helping build the dam and closure, said Alimur Razi Titu, local union chairman, who is the main initiator of the dam construction mass project.
“We are working day and night so that we can complete the construction work before the rain begins,” he added.
Many involved in the process are victims of cyclone, erosion and oceanic disaster. They are living in different parts of the globe leaving the area decades ago.
Sandwip is considered the oldest of the islands at the estuary of Meghna in the Bay of Bengal, but in recent decades much of the land around the island has been eroded.
A World Bank study projected that due to a rise in sea level, 40 per cent of land in Southern Bangladesh would be submerged by 2080.
An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said a one-metre (three-foot) rise in sea level would flood 17 per cent of Bangladesh and create 20 million refugees by 2050.
According to a research by Maminul Haque Sarker, senior advisor, River, Delta and Coastal Morphology of the Centre for Environmental and Geographical Services, Sandwip is now a 190-square-kilometre area and from 1943 to 2018, another 190-square-kilometre area has disappeared.
In the estuary of the Bay of Bengal, the process of simultaneous erosion and land awakening continues, sometimes more erosion and sometimes more awakening, Mominul said, adding that however, observations over the past decades have shown that the proportion of breakdown and awakening is almost equal.
He noted that erosion depends on sediments. If there is sufficient sediment in the water, water flow will stop and the risk of erosion will decline.
Locals are confident over the positive result of the dam-cum-road which will connect the newly emerged land with the adjacent areas.
Every day people at Sandwip come to see the construction of the dam and they dream of getting back their home address and cultivable land in the new char which was once lost.
“Here the land emerged eight to ten years ago, and vanished thereafter, but this time when the land was sighted, we took measures to build a dam to protect it,” said Ashraful Haque, an organiser of dam construction project.
According to the land ministry, when the char is awake, it is usually reforested. Once the char is stable, it is open to human habitation.
Stressing the need for stabilising the fallow land in the Western part of Sandwip, local lawmaker Mahfuzur Rahman Mita said the government has plans to adopt other methods, including afforestation, to protect the fallow land immediately.
