Rural Heritage April/May 2026

Ever-shifting land forms the Chars, a fertile but also one of the most fragile ecosystems on earth.

sandbar river island, known as Chars, such of the mighty Brahmaputra River. Chars are midstream islands formed through accretion of sedimentation of huge amounts of sand, silt and clay over time. They are in a constant state of transformation. In Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries in the world, land is scarce and the Chars are still used as areas for settlement and cultivation. Due to their geographical remoteness and exposure to environmental volatility, worsened by climate change, the marginalized Char dwellers count among the most underprivileged communities in the world. The constant threat of erosion and flooding with the lack of permanent infrastructure, forces them to migrate constantly. Following the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100, a long term plan by the Government of Bangladesh in 2018 for water and land management, the Chars count among the five “hotspots”, as particularly vulnerable due to climatic factors and geographical position (Sarker, 2021).

In addition to the worsening risk of flooding and erosion, droughts and rising temperatures are other environmental stresses affecting the Chars. Entirely dependent on fisheries and farming, climate change risks the livelihoods exacerbating poverty and malnutrition. Since the 1990s, rates in Bangladesh have declined, but the prevalence remains high with 38.7 per cent of under five-year-olds short for their age and 35 per cent underweight (Mahmud & Mbuya, 2016). However, it is not only environmental changes that threaten livelihoods, but also zoonotic diseases, easily transmitted by the close interactions between humans and animals in a very confined space, as well as soil-and water-borne deseases. More than just a simple word It was in the late 1990s, when Runa Khan, born in Bangladesh and founder of the FRIENDSHIP organization, first discovered these impoverished and unaddressed communities and began pioneering in 2002 a floating hospital on the Brahmaputra River. It

April/May 2026

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