Rivers of salt: life on Bangladesh's climate frontline. Nov 24, 2025

The people of Khulna and Satkhira districts live in a fragile balancing act between land and sea (Muhammad Amdad HOSSAIN).

By AFP - Agence France Presse

Rivers of salt: life on Bangladesh's climate frontline

Muhammad Amdad HOSSAIN

On Bangladesh's coast, where mighty Himalayan rivers meet the sea, water defines every rhythm of life, and every struggle.

Rising seas driven by climate change are swallowing low-lying areas, while stronger storms push saltwater further inland, turning wells and lakes brackish, according to government scientists.

For the millions living in the ecologically sensitive deltas of mudflats and mangrove forests, finding clean drinking water has become an escalating challenge.

Cyclone Aila in 2009 was a turning point.

Embankments broke and saltwater swept inland, flooding not only homes, but also seeping into once-fertile land.

The water that once sustained communities became undrinkable, and the land began to crack under layers of salt.

The people of Khulna and Satkhira districts today live in a fragile balancing act between land and sea.

Many families live in houses built on bamboo stilts to escape tidal floods.

Children bathe in yellow, saline water and grow up in a landscape of constant change, where rivers erode their homes and schools, and displacement has become the norm.

Men migrate for months seeking work.

Women and children walk for hours across parched, cracked soil to fetch water from distant ponds, or harvest rainwater, and store it in tanks supplied by charities.

Each household stores a few thousand litres, rationed carefully until the next monsoon arrives.

The daily act of collecting and storing water has become a quiet ritual of endurance.

This reporting accompanies a photography series carried out by Muhammad Amdad Hossain for AFP's 2025 Marai Photo Grant, an award open to photographers from South Asia aged 25 or under.

The theme for 2025 was "climate change" and its impact on daily life and the community of the photographers who enter.

The award is organised by Agence France-Presse in honour of Shah Marai, the former photo chief at AFP's Kabul bureau.

Shah Marai, who was an inspiration for Afghan photographers throughout his career, was killed in the line of duty at the age of 41 in a suicide attack on April 30, 2018, in Kabul.

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