©Stuart Matthews
Guest post and photography essay from photographer Stuart Matthews
In November, 2009, I visited Bangladesh to document the impact of global warming on the country and its’ people. I focused on how NGO’s such as Oxfam Great Britain are collaborating with the communities to develop initiatives like the ‘Cash for Work’ program. This provides an income to the individual workers who participate in developing the climate defenses around their community.
Bangladesh has an extremely vulnerable landscape with 80% of its land made up of low-lying deltaic plains with an altitude of only 10 meters above sea level or less. This land is subject to frequent flooding during the Monsoon season, with large quantities of water flowing down the Jamuna and Padma rivers, causing catastrophic erosion along the banks of a fragile, predominantly silt, landscape.
© Stuart Matthews
The unpredictable weather shifts have made it hard for the communities of Bangladesh to cope with changing climates. In May 2009 Cyclone Aila tore across the south-western coast of Bangladesh destroying more than 700km (434 miles) of coastal embankments and wiping out thousands of homes, leaving the people marooned or forced to take refuge in shelters. Seven months later the people are still forced to live on the embankments of the rivers.
Workers throughout the country, have been adapting the landscape by raising land and repairing the embankments to combat the rising tides, allowing residents to move back to some of the land that was made uninhabitable by the affects of Cyclone Aila.
I met Sardar Babu, who is one of the 1,300 workers building a 9,500ft Ring Dam in Shekaribari, Koira. This will cross 3 canals and create a barrier against the rising floods during the Monsoon season. In Sardar’s own words: “I am very happy to join this kind of work, I do not see myself as a construction worker, more as a worker for the people of Koira. We are concerned about what the future holds, this dam will allow us to return to our land and rebuild our homes.”
The Shekaribari community have been living on the river embankments since their houses were destroyed by Cyclone Aila in May 2009. Living on these embankments, however, is illegal and many residents have been forced to find shelter elsewhere because of eviction notices from the Bangladeshi Government.
Clearly Bangladesh is on the front line of climate change. My work has therefore been to introduce the viewer to the people that are actually being affected by climate change, every day, and how they are developing their landscape to protect their homes and adapt to the threats that climate change brings.
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