Bangladesh’s exposure to the growing hazard of sea-level rise in the 21st century needs to be seen in the perspective of its exposure to current environmental hazards and its growing development needs. If sea-level is currently rising at 1.3 mm/year, that is by only 13 mm (= 0.5 inch) in 10 years. Even if the rate is 3 mm/year, that is by only 30 mm (=1.2 inches) in 10 years. But Bangladesh’s population of 160 million is currently growing at ca 2 million a year: i.e., it could grow by 20 million in the next 10 years. That will generate much greater pressure on the country’s land and water resources and its economy than will a slowly-rising sea-level.

The country’s agricultural land is already fully developed; in fact, considerable areas of valuable farmland are being lost to expansion of settlements and infrastructure each year. Priority attention therefore needs to be paid to addressing current development and environmental problems: i.e., intensifying agricultural production; expanding economic activities outside agriculture; reducing exposure to existing levels of drought, floods and cyclones; supplementing dry-season flow in south-western rivers; and minimising impacts of arsenic-contaminated groundwater used for drinking and irrigation in large parts of the country. Rates of sea-level rise may increase and demand more urgent attention later in the 21st century, but Bangladesh faces serious problems now that need urgent attention if the country is to sustain its ability to feed, support and safeguard the livelihoods of its population in the short and medium terms.

However, several of the measures for mitigating the impacts of a rising sea-level described above are also needed to address current environmental and development problems. Most urgent of these is the need for measures to halt – and, if possible, reverse ? the growing problem of salt-water intrusion in the south-west of Bangladesh. Water taken from rivers and groundwater for domestic, industrial or irrigation use anywhere in the Ganges and Brahmaputra catchment areas ? inside as well as outside Bangladesh ? decreases dry-season flow to the coastal zone; and it must be expected that increasing withdrawal of water in upper India in future decades will continue to decrease dry-season flow in the Ganges river before it reaches Bangladesh. That means that nation-wide measures are needed now to use water resources more efficiently, especially for irrigation, which would also be beneficial in arsenic-contaminated areas. There is a present need, too, to test and introduce mitigation measuresas a means to increase agricultural production and to safeguard lives and livelihoods against current environmental hazards in relevant coastal and near-coastal regions.

In relation to sea-level rise, the most important early measure required is to start making more detailed assessments of the current physical, economic and human geography of the different physiographic regions and subregions within and adjoining the coastal zone in order to provide a comprehensive factual basis for planning current and future development. Existing institutions for monitoring tide levels, river flow, soil and water salinity, land levels and land use need to be strengthened. Field surveys will be needed to supplement existing information (some of which, like soil surveys carried out 50 years ago, will need to be updated); and interpretations of satellite images must be supported by adequate ground testing. Such surveys will need to be followed by relevant studies to identify, test and cost appropriate intervention measures for individual areas, including institutional and political measures that might be needed to implement and support identified measures.

Budgets and time-frames for implementation in different areas will then need to be drawn up. Patently, it will be essential to engage local people in such studies and decisions in order both to harness their local environmental knowledge and to gain their support for implementing and supporting changes that are considered necessary in both their own and the national interest. The geographical diversity and complexity of Bangladesh’s coastal zone and the multidisciplinary nature of many of the mitigation measures identified suggest that a comprehensive Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plan is needed, along the lines of the Dutch delta management plan, with appropriate staffing to prepare, operate and oversee it.

Many of the measures described above are needed regardless of a rising sea-level with global warming. So are several similar land and water management and institutional measures in other parts of the country to feed and employ the burgeoning population. Future sea-level rise ? and climate changemerely add urgency to the existing need for a national plan to implement relevant measures to safeguard, maintain and accelerate economic and social development in the country in pace with its growing population and its exposure to existing environmental hazards .The range of studies needed in order to formulate such an integrated development plan in Bangladesh ? the country in which intervention to meet current and future development needs is perhaps most urgently required ? could provide a model for such planning in other countries with low-lying coastal areas.