Public Story
A Land of Despair
In the Ganges and Brahmaputra deltas in Bangladesh, the water is becoming increasingly salty. This threatens the mangrove forests - and the health of the women. In coastal Bangladesh, climate change devastates women’s reproductive health.
“I might have to remove my uterus if I do not get treatment now. The doctor advised me not to bathe in the saline water. He advised me to drink one kind of water if possible, and stop consuming saline water”, says Azmira Begum, 28, who lives in Lokhikhali village in a mud house; There is a pond behind her house. But for the past two years, the pond's water is no longer drinkable, she says. Until then, the villagers still fetched drinking water from the pond, but now it is too salty. And for the past year, many have been suffering from the increased temperatures.
Thousands of Bangladeshi women like Begum face devastating reproductive health issues caused by the increasing salt content in the waters in which they live and work, threatening not only their health and safety but also the well-being of their families and the stability of their communities. That salt comes from the Bay of Bengal, where Bangladesh’s major rivers meet the sea. Hundreds of rivers snake across the country, the eighth-most populous in the world, buttressed in the south by the planet’s largest mangrove forest.
Thousands of Bangladeshi women like Begum face devastating reproductive health issues caused by the increasing salt content in the waters in which they live and work, threatening not only their health and safety but also the well-being of their families and the stability of their communities. That salt comes from the Bay of Bengal, where Bangladesh’s major rivers meet the sea. Hundreds of rivers snake across the country, the eighth-most populous in the world, buttressed in the south by the planet’s largest mangrove forest.
Yet as global temperatures climb and the planet’s glaciers melt, the region’s low-lying delta can only do so much to stave off the rising sea. These impacts have far-reaching societal implications, and among those most at risk are women living in parts of the world that are least responsible for global warming yet are often powerless to stop the consequences. At the heart of the issue is the fact that, while no one is immune to the effects of climate change, global warming does not affect everyone equally.
Six months ago, Akhter, 25, underwent a hysterectomy after suffering what she described as “unbearable pain” following the birth of her second child. Even after the operation, she said she still experiences bouts of fever and vomiting. Her illness, according to her doctors, is caused by excessive exposure to salt water.
My core idea of conducting this project with a visual narrative is to bring a deeper perspective to the table of the world’s leaders. Where decision-makers see losing the uterus for climate change as horrific, losing identity, and losing people's roots is not just putting them into numbers. It’s not only about the tangible loss but the stress, trauma, and uncertainty of life and what’s coming next. To bring visuals of such damage and loss that engrave deeper than any stats. Young women are losing their hair, undergoing total removal of the uterus, skin patches, and skin diseases are making their life harder, cannot put this into any data. The people I met do not understand climate change, raising temperatures, and how it’s connected globally. But everyone at the forefront of climate change knows they have lost everything they accumulated through generations. I want to show that urgent aspects of the climate crisis havocking the lives of women who are the most vulnerable in the world already, which is why this project is remarkable to me.
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