Sea level rise is ruining coastal Bangladesh with salty water (commentary)

Every morning, before the sun has fully risen over the tidal flats of Satkhira in southwest Bangladesh, women begin walking. They walk two kilometers, sometimes five (about 1.2 to 3.1 miles) and sometimes more, carrying empty vessels that they will fill with water fit for drinking. Then they walk back. Then, some days, they walk again.

A UNDP study found that women in coastal Bangladesh spend up to six hours a day on this task alone, six hours that cannot be spent earning, learning or caring for their children, and this is not even a drought zone. This is one of the largest deltas on Earth.

The women walk past rivers, channels and flooded fields. The water is everywhere, and none of it is safe.

Approximately 20 million people along Bangladesh’s coast cannot safely drink the water that surrounds them. Yet, a UNDP survey found that 73% of residents in five coastal sub-districts of Satkhira consume saline water every single day. The crisis does not make the front pages of international newspapers the way droughts in East Africa or floods in Pakistan tend to. It is slow, structural and unglamorous, which is precisely why it has been allowed to continue for this long.

The intrusion of saltwater into Bangladesh’s coastal mainland is not simply a consequence of rising seas, though the seas are certainly rising. Studies project that sea levels along Bangladesh’s coast could rise by around 32 centimeters (just over a foot) by 2050, worsening salinity intrusion, flooding and erosion across vulnerable coastal areas, in a crisis that was accelerated by choices, not just the climate.

In 1975, India commissioned the Farakka Barrage upstream on the Ganges, and the consequences downstream have been severe. Research shows a statistically significant decline in freshwater flows through the Gorai River since the early 1980s, which has directly increased salinity levels across southwestern Bangladesh. Four of the country’s 10 major rivers now carry flows below the minimum needed to sustain local ecosystems. Without sufficient freshwater to hold it back, salty tides move inland unchecked.

Then there are the shrimp. Marketed as “blue gold” from the 1980s onwards, saltwater shrimp farming transformed Bangladesh’s coastal economy — and poisoned it. To create conditions that shrimp require, farmers have flooded rice paddies with saline water, sometimes deliberately breaking the embankments that had protected freshwater ponds for generations.According to the Bangladesh Frozen Foods Exporters Association, shrimp are now cultivated across 81% of available coastal land. Research estimates that roughly 1.5 million hectares (over 3.7 million acres) have been salinized over three decades, so the soil’s fertility is gone, the freshwater aquifers beneath are contaminated, and the ponds that once held clean water no longer exist.

Cyclone Sidr in 2007 and Aila in 2009 compounded every one of these pressures. When Aila’s floodwaters receded, they left behind saline residue that contaminated ponds and tube wells for months. Some communities are still recovering. In this delta, the violence of a single storm can undo decades of incremental progress.

Saline water does not simply taste bad but rather, it kills, slowly and in ways that rarely appear in a single death certificate. Research published in the journal Elementa found that people consuming slightly saline drinking water — between 1,000 and 2,000 milligrams per liter — were 17% more likely to be hypertensive, while those drinking moderately saline water faced a 42% greater risk.Studies conducted in the region of Dacope found significant links between sodium intake from drinking water and both preeclampsia and gestational hypertension in pregnant women. In southwestern Bangladesh, more than half of women in two sub-districts reported gynecological infections or inflammation linked to prolonged exposure to saline water. Some have undergone hysterectomies, not because of cancer or acute illness, but owing to years of untreated infections caused by the only water available, which leaves surgery as the last option.

Another study published in 2025 found that 93.3% of women with gynecological problems in coastal areas had to travel more than one kilometer (over half a mile) to access safe water. During the dry season, when rivers and ponds grow most brackish, women in some areas spend as much as 20% of their household income buying treated water from vendors.

But Bangladesh is not without answers. The government’s Delta Plan 2100, a long-term national framework, explicitly addresses coastal zone management, river dredging and expanded freshwater flows. Tidal river management, a technique that uses controlled flooding to deposit silt and naturally raise land elevation, has been successfully piloted within Bangladesh. Managed aquifer recharge, which captures monsoon rainfall for dry-season use, along with rainwater harvesting have both delivered results when deployed.

None of these solutions is experimental. None of them requires technologies that do not exist. What they require is coordinated, consistent implementation across the ministries responsible for water, agriculture and local government. That coordination has not materialized.

Soil salinity in Bangladesh’s coastal region grew by 26.7% between 1973 and 2009, and the affected area is still expanding by approximately 146 square kilometers (over 56 square miles) every year. These numbers are not slowing down. What has been missing is not knowledge or technology, but the institutional will to treat this like the emergency that it is, rather than a background condition to be managed at the margins.

Bangladesh contributes less than 0.5% of global carbon emissions and its coastal communities have done almost nothing to cause the climate crisis now swallowing their shoreline. Yet, when international conversations happen at climate summits, in development finance institutions or in the columns of newspapers printed in countries whose emissions have warmed these seas, the women of Satkhira are not in the room.

The question is not whether Bangladesh has the solutions to this crisis — it does; the question is whether those with the power to act will treat 20 million people’s suffering as something other than a footnote.

The rivers are running dry, the sea is moving in and, every morning, women are still walking.

AL Sharia is an environmental writer focused on climate change and climate justice in Bangladesh. He is a student at Begum Rokeya University, Rangpur.

Banner image: A woman collects water from a pond in Bangladesh, where drinkable water is becoming increasingly scarce due to salt contamination from sea level rise. Image courtesy of Abu Siddique/Dialogue Earth.

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Citations:

Khan, A. E., Ireson, A., Kovats, S., Mojumder, S. K., Khusru, A., Rahman, A., & Vineis, P. (2011). Drinking water salinity and maternal health in coastal Bangladesh: Implications of climate change. Environmental Health Perspectives, 119(9), 1328-1332. doi:10.1289/ehp.1002804

Shariot-Ullah, M. (2024). Sea-level rise and sustainable shore protection strategies in the low-lying delta: A case study of Bangladesh. Regional Studies in Marine Science, 71, 103424. doi:10.1016/j.rsma.2024.103424

Gain, A., & Giupponi, C. (2014). Impact of the Farakka dam on thresholds of the hydrologic flow regime in the lower Ganges River basin (Bangladesh). Water, 6(8), 2501-2518. doi:10.3390/w6082501

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Khan, A. E., Ireson, A., Kovats, S., Mojumder, S.K., Khusru, A., Rahman, A., & Vineis, P. (2011). Drinking water salinity and maternal health in coastal Bangladesh: Implications of climate change. Environmental Health Perspectives, 119(9), 1328-1332. doi:10.1289/ehp.1002804

Hossain, M. M., & Pal, I. (2025). Reproductive health challenges in coastal Bangladesh: A silent threat of water salinity. BMC Women’s Health, 25(1). doi:10.1186/s12905-025-03989-5

Gain, A. K., Benson, D., Rahman, R., Datta, D. K., & Rouillard, J. J. (2017). Tidal river management in the south west Ganges-Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh: Moving towards a transdisciplinary approach? Environmental Science & Policy, 75, 111-120. doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2017.05.020

Sarkar, S., Haydar, M., Rudra, R. R., Mazumder,T., Nur, M. S., Islam, M. S., … Ravela, S. (2025). A topsoil salinity observatory for arable lands in coastal Southwest Bangladesh. Scientific Data, 12(1). doi:10.1038/s41597-025-05447-1

Cite this article

AL Sharia (2026). Sea level rise is ruining coastal Bangladesh with salty water (commentary). Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-322217