Thomas Pendergast Vladeck home

Another update to “Conflict”: Bangladesh

Bangladesh worries me. As I wrote here,

Bangladesh is the most densely populated country in the world, with 150 million people crammed into an area the size of New York State. It also lies in lowlands, and a 1 meter rise in sea levels would flood about 10% of the land. Clearly, with so many people in such a small area, this would create problems. In addition, many people don’t know that Bangladesh used to be “East Pakistan”, or the eastern of two predominantly Muslim regions of the former British colony, and it shares with modern India (Bangladesh’s neighbor) and Pakistan in their violent history. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where sea level rises (among other negative climatic changes) cause massive displacements of people in a context that cannot support that other than violently.
There is a great story today in the New York Times about how climate change is affecting Bangladesh. Read it and let me know what you think.