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Bangladesh - a land of devastating floods





Bangladesh is the most densely populated country in the world, currently with 826 people per square kilometre. Let’s put this in perspective. Australia has only 2.4 people per square kilometre. Physically, Australia is 53 times larger than Bangladesh, but Bangladesh has 7 times more people. Bangladesh has one doctor for every 9,000 people and one nurse for every 20,000 people.

In Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, there is a staggering 64,000 people per square kilometer. By comparison, Australia’s capital, Sydney, has 35 people per square kilometer.

Bangladesh is geographically flat with the largest estuarine delta in the world. It has an annual rainfall of 2,540 mm. Adelaide, in Australia has an average rainfall of 500 mm, while Sydney has, on average, 1,180 mm per year.

With seventy-five percent of the land less than three metres above sea level, Bangladesh is extremely vulnerable to flooding and cyclones. Deforestation on the slopes of the Himalayas in the north has increased the threat of flooding in the coastal lowlands of Bangladesh which are also subject to devastating monsoon storms between June and September.

Around 139,000 people were killed and thousands were threatened by epidemics after the devastating cyclone of April 29-30, 1991. Between 4-10 million people were homeless after 1,300,000 square kilometres of land was flooded. Of the top ten worst floods in the world, since records commenced, Bangladesh has had four of them.

Top 10 Worst Floods
(with estimated deaths)
1. China, Aug 1931 - 3,700,000 killed

2. Bangladesh, Nov 1970 – 50,000 killed

3. China, Sept 1939 – 200,000 killed

4. China, Sept 1911 – 100,000 killed

5. India, Nov 1942 – 40,000 killed

6. Bangladesh, June 1965 – 30,000 killed

7. Bangladesh, May 1963 – 22,000 killed

8. Bangladesh, May 1965 – 17,000 killed

9. India, Aug 1979 – 15,000 killed

10. Bangladesh, May 1985 – 10,000 killed



 

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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