Climate change threatens already precarious life on the river-islands of Bangladesh. Novelist Tahmima Anam, born in the country, reports on a scheme to help the ‘char dwellers’ keep their heads above water.

Novelist Tahmima Anam, born in the country, reports on a scheme to help the ‘char dwellers’ keep their heads above water.The most recent projections about the effects of man-made climate change tell us that Bangladesh is sure to be among its first victims. This past July, I travelled to Chouhali, a river-island on the banks of the Jamuna river in Bangladesh, to learn how local people are adapting to their difficult, sometimes treacherous environment.

Bangladesh is part of a low-lying delta, meaning any slight shift in sea levels will cause the land to slowly be swallowed by the waters of the Bay of Bengal. In the next 50 years, 17% of Bangladesh’s landmass will go underwater, causing over 30 million people to become homeless. Those that live further inland will be only slightly better off: the cyclones and floods that are already a feature of the weather will occur more frequently and with greater ferocity. If the sea level rises by five metres, the capital will go under.

But while we can look to Bangladesh with concern, it is equally crucial to see what the people here can teach us about adapting to and coping with the challenges of climate change. Bangladeshis have, for generations, adapted to their environment, and the residents of Bangladesh’s riverislands are a special example of their tenacity. The small islands on which they live – forced there because, in a country of 180 million people, every inch of available space has to be used – have an average lifespan of nine years before they are made uninhabitable.

The Jamuna River is often called the Jamuna braid, because the river – 22 kilometres across at its widest point – splits into estuaries and channels, diverging and reconnecting to create a shifting landscape that is part land, part water. It is in the Jamuna braid that most of Bangladesh’s chars are located. A char is an island made of river silt. Every year in Bangladesh, new chars emerge out of the river’s changing course, and as these new chars appear, old ones are returned to the water. Here, the Chars Livelihood Project (CLP), a collaboration between the Bangladesh Government and DFID, has been helping islanders cope with their uncertain terrain.

Char-dwellers have always built their homesteads on the highest possible ground, knowing that their proximity to the water means that their land will be the first to go under in the event of a flood. The CLP project has taken this model and raised the homesteads of the poorest islanders, creating plinths on which they can build houses, grow small gardens, and tend their livestock.

They have also given them access to clean water, latrines, and a small cash advance. Once the monsoon is in full sway, each of these homes will be surrounded by water, tiny islands of their own, but thanks to the raised ground, the homesteads will withstand the harshest of storms.

After a three-hour drive from Dhaka, we take a 45-minute speedboat ride up the Jamuna river and arrive at Chouhali char. Chouhali has no electricity, no running water, no hospitals, roads, or government offices. It has a school, a long, rectangular building that’s been divided in two for the upper and lower grades. When the floods arrived last year, it was this building that sheltered the villagers whose homes were submerged. With such little state infrastructure, the officers of the CLP project have stepped in, setting up a health clinic, organising community meetings, and generally keeping track of the islanders’ well-being.

We visit Joneka, who has recently come under the CLP project. Of all the poor residents of Chouhali, Joneka is considered one of the poorest. Before I meet her I am told that she is a widow. Having no land of her own to till, and no man to provide a weekly wage, she and her two young sons rely for food on her small patch of garden. Recently, the CLP have been giving her a small stipend, to tide her over until she can sell her cow in the market. I am amazed at Joneka’s strength. She appears undefeated by the hardships of her life, and tells me instead of the joys of finally having a home she knows will survive the floods. She is busy fattening her cow, which she will sell for a profit at the Eid market in a few months. This sale will put Joneka on the path to self-sufficiency.

I see the same fighting spirit in the eyes of other char dwellers, each of whom makes an impression: Rabeya, who lives on a nearby plinth and grows sesame trees; the young boy in a sequined shirt who sings to us, the midwife who has seen generations pass through her textured hands.

The following day, Joneka hosts a community meeting, led by Malek Bhai, a young, energetic community organiser. As well as giving financial support to the islanders, the CLP project provides a forum for a wide range of topics, from the controversial – this week they are discussing the perils of the dowry system – to the practical, such as how best to care for their livestock. The women are curious to speak with me, and as I play with their children, I ask them how many times the river has taken their homes. Eleven, one says. Seventeen, says another. Each time they have barely escaped with their lives, every one of their possessions gone in a flash. They tell me, in loud voices, how grateful they are for their raised ground. They want to thank me, and I have to explain that it has nothing to do with me, that I have just come to meet them and write about them.

I ask them what they want more than anything in the world. The women insist that, having now been given the chance to live in homes that are no longer under threat of being flooded, they wish for little else. When I press them again, they ask me to please tell the government to reduce the price of rice – it has trebled in the past six months. “And we wish we had tin roofs for our homes,” they say. Ultimately, the islanders are occupied with the same challenges that face millions – the reality of living in a world where the rising cost of food means they will skip meals or face malnutrition. And who knows what horrors the future, with its promise of new environmental challenges, will bring. But the people of Chouhali char face each of these with tenacity and forebearance, and, with a little help, find their feet on uncertain ground.

Tahmima Anam, pictured below right, is the author of A Golden Age.