Salinity and debt are trapping families in Shyamnagar upazila of Satkhira, one of the frontlines of climate change in Bangladesh.
World leaders gather in Antalya, Turkey, on Monday.
By 2024, salinity had degraded two-thirds of the 17.03 lakh hectares of cultivable land in 18 southern districts, according to the Soil Salinity Map of Bangladesh 2024 prepared by SRDI. Salinity reaches up to eight times the tolerable limit of 2 dS/m.
About 50 lakh people are internally displaced in Bangladesh, according to IDMC 2026.
Reshma Begum moved after Cyclone Amphan in 2020.
Itagachha slum has grown from about 500 people in 1994 to nearly 4,500, said Ali Noor Khan Babul of the Satkhira Nagarik Committee. Satkhira town has 47 slums.
Shyamnagar has 186 people per square kilometer, against 1,119 nationally, according to Census 2022.
Debt is another burden. A survey of 270 households by Caritas Bangladesh in July 2025 found that about 90 percent of households had loans. The average family debt was Tk 58,782, and about 75 percent of the borrowing was from NGOs.
M Asaduzzaman said the National Adaptation Plan 2023-2050 has 113 interventions in 11 regions, needing more than $230bn, nearly three-quarters of it by 2040.
