Dhaka, Nov 14 (AFP) Dozens of new islands have emergedfrom the waters around Bangladesh over the last decade,providing a possible solution to the existential threat thatrising sea levels pose to the low-lying coastal nation.
The government said yesterday that 29 islands with acombined area of 125,370 acres (507 sq kms) had emerged fromthe Bay of Bengal since 2007.
Every year Himalayan rivers carry an estimated onebillion tonnes of silts and deposit them in the Bay of Bengaloff the coast of Bangladesh, forming islands in the shallowwaters.
Many of these islands, known as chars in Bangladesh, arealready inhabited and experts told AFP they could mitigate thethreat posed by global warming.
"Every year Bangladesh has new land emerging and new landbeing devoured by rivers and sea," said Maminul Haque Sarker,head of the Center for Environment and Geographic InformationServices.
He said studies by the Dhaka research centre had shown anet gain of territory of around 12-14 sq kms.
Most of the new land is near the estuary of the Meghnariver, which is the confluence of the main tributaries of thetwo main Himalayan rivers of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra.
One of the islands has controversially been earmarked asa possible temporary base for the hundreds of thousands ofRohingya refugees from Myanmar currently living in squalid --mostly makeshift -- camps in southern Bangladesh.
The United Nations says 615,000 refugees from the Muslimminority have crossed into Bangladesh from its Buddhistneighbour since late August.
The influx has overwhelmed existing facilities in thedensely populated country, and authorities have struggled tofind alternative land to house them.
A recent World Bank study projected that 40 per cent ofproductive land in southern Bangladesh would be submerged bythe year 2080 due to a rise in sea levels.
A decade ago the influential Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change (IPCC) said a one-metre (three-foot) rise insea levels would flood 17 per cent of Bangladesh and create 20million refugees by 2050.
Local scientists, however, criticised the study forfailing to take into account the silt islands, which arehighly fertile.
Water expert Zahirul Haque Khan told AFP dams could beset up to trap the vast amounts of sediment that flows fromBangladesh's rivers into the sea every year.
"Bangladesh can gain hundreds of square kilometres of newland by trapping silt through cross dams and engineeringinterventions," said Khan, director of Institute of WaterModelling in Dhaka. (AFP)KIS.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.