Bangladesh’s major rivers have erased vast tracts of farmland and villages, repeatedly displacing families who eventually abandon rural life for urban slums, with fresh risks forecast for 2026.
Over the past five decades, the Jamuna, Ganges and Padma rivers have together eroded 158,353 hectares of land – roughly 1,585 square kilometres, nearly five times the combined area of Dhaka’s two city corporations. Newly formed chars have returned about 433 square kilometres, yet the net loss stands at approximately 1,153 square kilometres, still close to four times the capital’s size. The Jamuna (or Brahmapurta river) alone accounts for about 60 per cent of the total, having taken 94,220 hectares while regaining only 14,955. The Ganges and Padma contributed 30,290 and 33,843 hectares of erosion respectively. These figures, drawn from satellite analysis by the Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS), underscore a slow-motion disaster that has uprooted millions and continues to reshape lives and landscapes across the delta.
Each year the rivers claim more ground. CEGIS estimates a further 915 hectares will erode in 2026 across eleven vulnerable reaches in Gaibandha, Jamalpur, Kurigram, Pabna, Kushtia and Faridpur. The forecast flags 73 established sites at risk, including four schools, three mosques and one health clinic. In 2025 the Ganges led the damage with 593 hectares, followed by the Jamuna at 348 and the Padma at 93. Although overall erosion rates have declined – from roughly 9,500 hectares in 1995 to 1,034 hectares in 2025 – the human toll remains severe. Researchers estimate that about 1,000 people are displaced for every square kilometre lost. A Change Initiative projection warns that by 2050 one in seven Bangladeshis could be displaced by climate change, with erosion responsible for roughly 26.6 per cent of that total.
From Fertile Banks to Temporary Chars
The process rarely ends with a single loss. Families lose homesteads and farmland, resettle on newly risen sandbars known as chars, then watch those too vanish as the rivers shift course again. Many move multiple times before abandoning rural life entirely. Government tallies remain incomplete; the Department of Disaster Management’s most recent figures, from 2019, recorded 24,328 families affected across nine districts with damage estimated at Tk 366 crore. Independent researchers place the annual land loss closer to 100 square kilometres or about 10,000 hectares. In northern districts such as Kurigram and Gaibandha, repeated displacement has become routine. Some residents report losing homes 30 or more times in a lifetime.
In Kathuria village of Shariatpur’s Zajira upazila, between 100 and 150 families still cling to the Padma’s edge. Mansura Begum watched the river advance from half a kilometre away a few years ago to within her yard earlier this season. She and her husband dismantled their house with neighbours’ help and now live in a makeshift tin shelter. Nearby Majherkandi has relocated three times in living memory: first eroded decades ago, then resettled on a mid-river char that itself disappeared seven years later, forcing survivors onto land belonging to the Bangladesh Bridge Authority that periodically issues eviction notices.
The Long Road to Dhaka’s Informal Settlements
For many, the final destination is the capital’s overcrowded low-lying slums. Bholar Basti in Pallabi, Dhaka, now houses more than 30,000 people, most displaced by erosion and flooding in Bhola district. Similar clusters form in Mirpur-12, Molla Bosti and Duaripara.
Ibrahim Mia once farmed more than three acres of sugarcane, peanuts and rice on the Jamuna bank in Chargilabari, Jamalpur. After the river took his land and house, he moved his family to a relative’s home in Gaibandha, then travelled alone to Karwan Bazar in 2009. He has worked as a day labourer in the wholesale vegetable market ever since, earning about Tk 1,000 a day, most of which goes on food, bathing and a place to sleep. “I am working here and waiting for my land to emerge in the Jamuna,” he said. “Once my land emerges through accretion, I’ll go back to Jamalpur.”
The pattern is consistent. With limited education or marketable skills, former farmers become rickshaw-pullers, domestic workers or casual labourers. They settle in flood-prone informal settlements already populated by earlier waves of erosion migrants, concentrating poverty in specific urban corridors. Studies across Gaibandha, Sirajganj and coastal districts confirm the same trajectory: land loss, livelihood collapse, repeated internal moves and, for many, eventual permanent migration to cities.
Protection Measures and their Limits
The Bangladesh Water Development Board responds mainly by dumping sand-filled geobags along threatened banks, often after homes and roads are already under pressure. Embankments built for flood control sometimes double as erosion barriers, yet the Jamuna still claimed 348 hectares in 2025 despite the Brahmaputra flood embankment. In places such as Raumari in Kurigram, Gaibandha and Sadarpur in Faridpur, forecasts show hundreds of hectares of land and settlement at risk this year. Temporary bamboo piling and emergency geo-bags provide short-term relief but rarely stop the long-term advance. Locals in multiple districts report that sand extraction and unplanned activity can accelerate bank collapse.
CEGIS has issued annual forecasts since 2004 using pre-monsoon satellite imagery. Average annual erosion across the three rivers has run near 30 square kilometres over five decades, but the trend within that average is downward. Jamuna erosion has fallen from around 5,000 hectares a year in the 1980s to roughly 1,500 hectares recently; Padma rates have similarly declined. The shift in balance – Ganges now the leading eroder in absolute terms – illustrates the rivers’ continuing dynamism even as overall rates ease.
Human Cost Beyond the Statistics
Beyond lost hectares lie disrupted education, fractured social networks and psychological strain. Children drop out of school after repeated moves. Women often shoulder the heaviest burden of rebuilding shelters and managing household survival in waist-deep water during concurrent floods. Mental-health studies in erosion-prone districts have recorded high rates of anxiety, depression and stress among those recently displaced. Entire villages vanish from maps; the next generation inherits only a name without an address. In Sirajganj, Gaibandha and along the Padma, residents describe a cycle of hope on new chars followed by renewed loss.
Independent assessments and local reporting from Kurigram, Jamalpur, Faridpur and Barishal paint the same picture: fertile agricultural land disappears overnight, livestock and standing crops are swept away, and families dismantle houses under pressure of the advancing current. In some areas more than half of surveyed households have been forced to migrate at least once. The economic fallout includes reduced income, increased debt and a shift from farming to precarious urban labour.
Looking Ahead to 2026 and Beyond
CEGIS’s 2026 forecast identifies specific stretches: seven along the Jamuna across Kurigram, Jamalpur, Gaibandha and Sirajganj threatening roughly 460 hectares of land and 64 hectares of settlement; three along the Ganges in Pabna and Kushtia; and one on the Padma at Sadarpur, Faridpur, expected to take more land than the entire river lost in 2025. Gaibandha faces the largest land loss among the Jamuna sites, while Kurigram risks the greatest settlement area. Two government primary schools, three mosques and Jamalpur’s only community clinic appear on the list of threatened infrastructure.
Experts editorials call for a more comprehensive national strategy that combines continuous satellite monitoring, preventive bank protection rather than reactive geo-bagging, and planned resettlement for the most vulnerable communities. Without such measures, the slow erasure of land will continue to funnel rural families into urban poverty, concentrating climate-driven displacement in already strained city neighbourhoods, experts say.
Focus keyphrase: river erosion Bangladesh land loss displacement
Tags: river erosion, Bangladesh, Jamuna, Padma, Ganges, CEGIS, displacement, climate migration, Dhaka slums, 2026 forecast, chars, bank protection, Brahmapurta,
