Rivers of Salt: Life on Bangladesh's Climate Frontline

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 seeping into once-fertile land.

(In this photograph taken on April 25, 2025, women carrying pots walk along the parched shores of Kholpetua river to fetch drinking water at Parshemari village in Khulna district. Photo: AFP/RSS)

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.

(In this photograph taken on October 21, 2025, climate-displaced fishermen load supplies onto boats for their voyage to the Bay of Bengal, a seasonal migration driven by declining fish stocks at Kholpetua river beset with rising sea levels in Satkhira district. Photo: AFP/RSS)

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.

(In this photograph taken on April 25, 2025, women fetch pots of drinking water from a tap with intermittent water supply, installed by an NGO (non-governmental organization) at Parshemari village in Khulna district. Photo: AFP/RSS)

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.

(In this photograph taken on July 13, 2025, fishing boats remain moored next to stilt houses along the shores of Shibsa river at Jhulonto Para, a village vulnerable to rising sea levels in Khulna district. Photo: AFP/RSS)

(This aerial photograph taken on July 13, 2025, shows a climate-displaced fishing community settlement at Jhulonto Para, a village vulnerable to rising sea levels in Khulna district near the Sundarbans mangrove forest. Photo: AFP/RSS)

AFP/RSS