Will Dubai pay heed to the suffering of Sultan Al Nahyan School students in Bangladesh?

In August this year, all the buildings of a school at the Agrabad Residential area of Chattogram went under water, and students attending classes in knee-deep water. Teachers and students say this is a fairly common scene at the Sultan Al Nahyan Government Primary School, named after the founder of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. 

Over the years, teachers would barricade the entrances and raise the roads to deal with seawater intrusion. As a result, the road is now over three feet higher than the ground floor of the school. However, all their efforts have gone in vain as the water level continues to rise each year. 

Agrabad Residential area's ground floors are now abandoned. The teachers said the school has been flooding since June 2007 and the water level is rising every year.

Chattogram Development Authority is also trying to solve the problem by raising road height, but the task is proving difficult as day by day, the intensity of climate disasters such as storms, cyclones, tides, floods, erratic rainfall and heat waves is increasing.  

In 2017, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) estimated that Chattogram would be submerged in the next 100 years, and over the next century, melting glaciers could raise the sea level by 14.01 centimetres. 

The rising sea levels are not the only problem, Chattogram is also suffering from land subsidence. A study titled "Subsidence in Coastal Cities Throughout the World Observed by InSAR," measured subsidence rates in 99 coastal cities around the world between 2015 and 2020 using the PS Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar method and Sentinel-1 data. It found that Chattogram's land is subsiding by over 20 millimetres per year. 

PHOTO: COURTESY

"The school is disrupted and sometimes we need to close classes due to sea-water intrusion especially from July to September," said Anwar Shahadat, head teacher of the school.  

"Every day, during high tide, water from the Bay of Bengal causes all the classrooms and offices to go under water by up to four feet. The vulnerability increases during heavy rainfall, full moons, new moons, storms and cyclones. We have no way to escape the water, so we are forced to do classes in the water," said Sajeda Rina, the class teacher of the fourth grade.  

"It's not just the flood water, the heat waves also cause suffering for the students," she added.

Mir Nur Tasnim, a fifth-grade student, said that they need to wash their clothes more frequently due to the prevalence of saline water. 

According to A S M Hasan Al Amin, executive director of Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Trust of the Social Welfare Ministry in Bangladesh, when Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan visited Bangladesh in May 1984, he expressed a desire to establish schools and orphanages. 

In 1987, two schools were built in Agrabad Residential Area in Chattogram and Khilgaon in Dhaka. Later in 1989, these schools were handed over to the education ministry and began running under the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education. The Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan al Nahyan Trust Bangladesh was founded in 1987 to run orphanages. 

The UN Climate Summit began on 30 November in Dubai. The top agenda of the summit is climate financing and reigning in fossil fuels, however, the host country - The United Arab Emirates - is one of the world's largest oil producers. 

All eyes are on Dubai, awaiting a decision on reducing emissions and releasing funds for vulnerable countries. After the Paris Agreement, those who signed will also face the first review of their progress towards their commitment to climate action and support.

Increasing vulnerability 

This is not an isolated example. Hundreds of schools in the Chattogram region go underwater during high tides, especially in the rainy season when cyclones and flash floods are frequent.

According to the Chattogram District Education office, over 200 primary schools within the region were inundated with flood water in August this year. Educational institutions in the division had to be closed in response to the severe flood situation that trapped approximately two million residents for a week. 

Bangladesh had faced two cyclones for the first time in 2019. In 2021, a record-breaking three cyclones hit the country. They faced one cyclone in 2022, but three cyclones—Mocha, Hamoon, and Midhili—hit the country in 2023. 

According to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in the coming days, along with rainfall, incidents of cyclones, tidal surges and floods will increase. The report also warns that the situation is going out of control. 

Every year, new areas of Chattogram such as Chattogram Port Jetty, Chandagaon, Oxygen and Ananna go underwater.  

PHOTO: COURTESY

According to the Centre For Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) around 18% of areas in Chattogram have an elevation of 0.19 -2.5 metres from sea level. However, the high tides ranging between 2.5 and 2.76 metres are causing regular flooding in these areas. 

CEGIS data shows that 51% of the area's elevation is 2.5-4.5 metres, and they are also mostly inundated during the rainy season, new moons, full moons and cyclones.

21% of the area is elevated at 5-30 metres, which is considered safe from flooding. The remaining 9% of areas have an elevation of 30 to over 90 metres, which is considered a hilly area. 

"We want an implementation of the commitments that have been made. Funding is absolutely critical for us. We always said that $100 billion for adaptation was not enough, because it was a political figure. We demand double and by 2025, to increase it several times. The climate funding should be allocated on a 50:50 ratio between adaptation and mitigation, and it must be new and additional," said Saber Hossain Chowdhury, special envoy to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for climate change.