London, Nov 26 Over 22 million people — about 13 per cent of Bangladesh’s population — live on land experiencing rapid, water-driven landscape changes, including riverbank erosion, land loss, and shifting river channels, according to the first-ever study on hydrogeomorphic hazards, a report said on Wednesday.
Strikingly, 86 per cent of those exposed fall within the poorest households, underscoring deep inequality at the intersection of climate risk, poverty, and development in the South Asian nation.
“The research, published in Nature Communications, shows that these hydrogeomorphic hazards — distinct from floods or storms — can permanently reshape land, destroy homes and farmland, and repeatedly displace vulnerable communities. Exposure is projected to rise further by 2050 as population pressures increase," a report in Environmental Change Institute (ECI), an interdisciplinary unit within the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment, detailed.
The study led by Amelie Paszkowski, Research Associate at the ECI and researcher with the Oxford Programme for Sustainable Infrastructure Systems (OPSIS), is the first to measure Bangladesh’s exposure to hydrogeomorphic hazards.
“Using 35 years of satellite data and high-resolution hydrogeomorphic modelling, the team mapped where Bangladesh’s land surface has changed most dramatically—and who is living in those unstable zones. They found that the poorest households are twice as likely as wealthier groups to reside in areas at risk from these long-term landscape shifts,” the report stated.
“Unlike floods, where people can often return once waters recede, hydrogeomorphic changes can erase land permanently, leaving families without homes, farmland, or viable places to relocate. This chronic, under-recognised hazard has long-term impacts on food security, livelihoods, education, and debt,” it added.
Amelie Paszkowski emphasised that these hazards must be integrated into Bangladesh’s climate adaptation and development strategies.
“People are not just recovering from water—they are losing the ground beneath them,” she added.
Highlighting the broader implications, co-author Professor Jim Hall, who leads OPSIS, said, “This research highlights risk patterns that have been hidden in plain sight. The risks of geomorphic changes are not well understood, but in highly dynamic rivers that flow through densely populated deltas, the impact on people, particularly the most vulnerable, can be very harmful. Hydrogeomorphic hazards must be part of disaster risk management and poverty alleviation strategies.”
With exposure projected to increase by up to 29 per cent by 2050 in Bangladesh, the author called for stronger social protection for communities in vulnerable regions and infrastructure designed to adapt to long-term landscape change. Additionally, he stressed the need for planning strategies that identify areas prone to permanent land loss, along with targeted interventions for the poorest, who face the highest risks.
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