Today, 30-year-old garment factory worker Khadiza Akhter lives in Savar, a suburb of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Her small concrete house is clean and organized. Green shutters frame the windows, and clothes hang on lines outside her front door. A water spigot sticks out of the concrete next to the drying laundry, and the turn of a white plastic knob is all it takes for clear, clean water to rush out. Akhter calls it “a blessing of God.”
Akhter grew up some 180 miles south of Savar, in Satkhira — a district home to 2.2 million people on a river delta where, in recent decades, fresh water has become scarce. As sea levels rise, rivers dry up, and cyclones become more severe, Satkhira and the other low-lying districts that surround it have been among the first in the world to experience the sting of climate change-driven saltwater intrusion — the creep of seawater inland.
The memory of drinking water tainted with salt is burned into Akhter’s mind. “It felt like swallowing needles,” she told Grist and Vox in Bengali. “It doesn’t quench your th... Read more
