It is the biggest river delta in the world, and it's a country. Its name is
Bangladesh.
There are no real boundaries here between the land and the sea.
Almost 300 waterways cross Bangladesh defining both its geography and its people's way of life.
From north to south via the capital
Dhaka, the country's 160 million inhabitants among the poorest and most densely populated in the world, have learnt to live surrounded by water and to adapt to its whims
.
In the south in the
Bay of Bengal, 3 of the planets greatest rivers, the
Ganges, the
Brahmaputra and the
Meghna, discharge every year more than a billion tons of sediment and more water than the all of
Europe rivers put together.
Here and for all, it remains the main resource, either for fishing or for agriculture upon which nearly 70% of
Bangladeshis. But now the water, this time ally, has become a real threat.
Caught between snow melt glaciers of the Himalayas to the north, and the rising waters of the
Indian Ocean to the south, residents find themselves overwhelmed by the water.
Cyclones, hurricanes, floods, erosion, land, located five meters above sea level, the locally suffers consequences of a global warming of which he is not responsible.
Worse, if global warming continues unabated, Bangladesh could lose up to 17% of its territory from here in 2050. Between 20 and 40 million people would be left without land while underfoot.
Walking through Bangladesh to the Bay of Bengal to the south, the "tanks", these northern precarious islands, through Dhaka or
Chittagong, the largest cemetery of ships in the world, the film tells the story of this country, front line of climate change and whose survival hangs by a thread.
- published: 17 Mar 2016
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