Sea Change: The Bay of Bengal's Vanishing Islands

Rapid erosion and rising sea levels are increasingly threatening the existence of islands off the coast of Bangladesh and India.

mrbichel/Flickr

Schoolteacher Nurul Hashem lives in a grass hut set among coconut palms and pine trees, yards from a pristine beach on the sparkling Bay of Bengal. It sounds idyllic, but he longs to return to the island of Kutubdia, 50 miles away, where his family home has been swallowed by ever-rising tides and is now out at sea under several feet of water.

To make matters worse, the local government, which welcomed him when he arrived three years ago, wants him and thousands of other families who have fled to the coast from the island, to make way for an airport and hotel developments.

Kutubdia is one of many islands off Bangladesh and India affected by increasingly rapid erosion and some of the fastest recorded sea-level rises in the world. These "vanishing islands" are shrinking dramatically. Kutubdia has halved in size in 20 years, to about 100 sq km. Since 1991 six villages on the island of fishermen and salt workers have been swamped and about 40,000 people have fled. Like Hashem, most have relocated to the coast near Cox's Bazar.

"The sea water is rising every day," says Hashem, who calls himself a climate refugee.

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http://climatedesk.org/2013/01/sea-change-the-bay-of-bengals-vanishing

Re: Why the chicken crossed the ocean -- twice

This is one of those deals which makes you scratch your head ... Why the chicken crossed the ocean -- twice ... the idea is that uncooked chickens will be shipped to China, from the U.S., cooked, packaged, and then shipped back to the U.S.

The article describes this as a politically motivated deal with China.

But I see it as an abysmal move in terms of sustainability. It's bad enough we get food shipped all over the world as it is, because that drives more use of oil and contributes to the baddening of our food. In order for food to remain safe as it's shipped across the world, it has to be buried in various preservative chemicals, or harvested when it's still unripe, etc.