A paddy field submerged in floodwater in Sylhet, Bangladesh, on June 24.
Photographer: Anik Rahman/BloombergClimate Migration Pushes Bangladesh’s Megacity to the Brink
People in the coastal areas of Bangladesh are migrating to Dhaka to escape flooding caused by climate change, but the fast-growing city isn’t safe either.
Minus Akther wakes up before dawn every day in a 100-square-foot shack she shares with her husband and two children. She opens the creaking door, snakes through the zigzagging alleys, and waits for a gas burner in the communal space shared by 10 other families.
Akther, 32, is one of the nearly 200,000 people living in the Korail slum in Dhaka, the megacity capital of Bangladesh. She used to live on the southern coast of the country where her family grew rice and raised cattle on half an acre of land, but a monsoon washed away everything. With her home and livelihood gone, her family moved to Dhaka.