A large part of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Basin makes up the most of Bangladesh’s land. In the northeastern part of the country, which the Meghna Basin covers, is currently experiencing highly destructive flash floods. Unusually heavy rains during the early monsoon have left around 4 million people stranded in the floodwaters. Human encroachment and development in […]
Much of Bangladesh lies in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Basin, where the three rivers meet in the world’s largest delta before washing out in the Bay of Bengal. The Meghna Basin covers the northeastern part of the country, which is currently experiencing unusually devastating flash floods. Some 4 million people have been stranded in the floodwaters, caused […]
In the past few months, newspapers across the globe have been flooded with a debate over new studies projecting a higher and faster sea-level rise by the next century, which would sound the death-knell for low-lying countries and coastal cities.
The debate has been fuelled by varying interpretations of the impact of melting ice, and by a new projection of up to 1.4m in sea-level rise by 2100, rather than a 2007 projection by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) of between 18cm and 59cm by that time, depending on a range of greenhouse-gas emission scenarios.
The new projections in sea-level rise, caused by accelerating rates of loss from ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica on account of higher global temperatures, even prompted the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Year Book 2009 to warn that important tipping points leading to irreversible changes in major earth systems may already have been reached or passed .