> Bangladesh gaining land, not losing: scientists
> by Shafiq Alam Wed Jul 30, 9:41 AM ET
> DHAKA (AFP) - New data shows that Bangladesh's landmass is increasing,
> contradicting forecasts that the South Asian nation will be under the
> waves by the end of the century, experts say.
> Scientists from the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic
> Information Services (CEGIS) have studied 32 years of satellite images
> and say Bangladesh's landmass has increased by 20 square kilometres
> (eight square miles) annually.
> Maminul Haque Sarker, head of the department at the government-owned
> centre that looks at boundary changes, told AFP sediment which travelled
> down the big Himalayan rivers -- the Ganges and the Brahmaputra -- had
> caused the landmass to increase.
> The rivers, which meet in the centre of Bangladesh, carry more than a
> billion tonnes of sediment every year and most of it comes to rest on
> the southern coastline of the country in the Bay of Bengal where new
> territory is forming, he said in an interview on Tuesday.
> The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has
> predicted that impoverished Bangladesh, criss-crossed by a network of
> more than 200 rivers, will lose 17 percent of its land by 2050 because
> of rising sea levels due to global warming.
> The Nobel Peace Prize-winning panel says 20 million Bangladeshis will
> become environmental refugees by 2050 and the country will lose some 30
> percent of its food production.
> Director of the US-based NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies,
> professor James Hansen, paints an even grimmer picture, predicting the
> entire country could be under water by the end of the century.
> But Sarker said that while rising sea levels and river erosion were both
> claiming land in Bangladesh, many climate experts had failed to take
> into account new land being formed from the river sediment.
> "Satellite images dating back to 1973 and old maps earlier than that
> show some 1,000 square kilometres of land have risen from the sea,"
> Sarker said.
> "A rise in sea level will offset this and slow the gains made by new
> territories, but there will still be an increase in land. We think that
> in the next 50 years we may get another 1,000 square kilometres of
> land."
> Mahfuzur Rahman, head of Bangladesh Water Development Board's Coastal
> Study and Survey Department, has also been analysing the buildup of land
> on the coast.
> He told AFP findings by the IPCC and other climate change scientists
> were too general and did not explore the benefits of land accretion.
> "For almost a decade we have heard experts saying Bangladesh will be
> under water, but so far our data has shown nothing like this," he said.
> "Natural accretion has been going on here for hundreds of years along
> the estuaries and all our models show it will go on for decades or
> centuries into the future."
> Dams built along the country's southern coast in the 1950s and 1960s had
> helped reclaim a lot of land and he believed with the use of new
> technology, Bangladesh could speed up the accretion process, he said.
> "The land Bangladesh has lost so far has been caused by river erosion,
> which has always happened in this country. Natural accretion due to
> sedimentation and dams have more than compensated this loss," Rahman
> said.
> Bangladesh, a country of 140 million people, has built a series of dykes
> to prevent flooding.
> "If we build more dams using superior technology, we may be able to
> reclaim 4,000 to 5,000 square kilometres in the near future," Rahman
> said.
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