Nurjahan, of Banyatala in Shyamnagar upazila of Satkhira, has lost her homestead to the Kholpetua River again and again. After moving several times, she now lives in a tin shed on top of the Banyatala embankment. Dhaka Tribune reports that her neighbour Afsar is in the same position; around fifty families once lived there, but many have left because of erosion and salinity. They know nothing of the COP31 climate summit under way in Antalya, Turkey.
Pijush Bauliya Pintu, of Munshiganj union, said the area has had a severe shortage of drinking water for decades. Many people have left for lack of water, women and children suffer from waterborne disease, and salt water has ruined the farmland entirely.
According to the report, the Climate Change Trust Fund has taken on 969 projects since 2009 and spent Tk 3,968 crore. A review found that 65 percent of the 322 projects taken between 2019 and 2023 were for things such as street lights. There are also allegations that the fund paid for parks, pond steps and buildings in divisional towns, while no allocation reached the embankments of the Khulna region.
Golam Kibria, executive engineer of Satkhira Water Development Board division 1, and Taskia, executive engineer of division 2, said that although Satkhira is among the areas hardest hit by climate change, their offices had received no money directly from the fund in the past four or five years; sea-level rise and climate are, however, considered in their regular embankment work. Satkhira municipality's executive officer Liakat Ali said Tk 37.22 crore of climate-fund work had been done in the town on drainage, water supply and roads.
District relief and rehabilitation figures show that of a Tk 18 lakh cash allocation for natural disasters in 2025-26, Tk 8.75 lakh was spent, and of 500 tonnes of rice, 37 tonnes. S M Mahfuzur Rahman, acting chief executive of the district council, said the Tk 1,707.22 lakh often cited for building homes for the homeless was a project from 15 to 20 years ago and that no large new support had come from the trust fund in recent years. Additional deputy commissioner Moin Islam said the district administration runs no large climate fund directly and only coordinates the work of other departments.
Human rights activist Madhab Chandra Datta said climate money had been wasted on unnecessary infrastructure instead of on the lives of those harmed, and that COP summits stayed at the negotiating table; people want fair compensation, not promises of grants or loans. Principal Ashek-e-Elahi, member secretary of the Shyamnagar upazila climate council, said the losses caused by climate change were not a matter of asking for pity but a right, and that the most vulnerable areas need special allocations.
Photo: Press Information Department / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
Source: Dhaka Tribune
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