00:00On an island in the Brahmaputra River in Bangladesh, people are busy moving a house onto a barge
00:08to take it to safer ground.
00:11The river creates islands like this one, called chars, from the sediment it carries all the
00:15time.
00:16But in time, it also washes them away.
00:22People in this part of the world know when it's time to move on.
00:26For hundreds of families in northern Bangladesh, it's a way of life, and a hard one.
00:31For each move, displaced people must make new arrangements with the landowners of newly
00:35formed chars.
00:37Fifty-year-old Nurun Nabi can remember moving 31 times in his lifetime.
00:44Now it's time to pack up and ship off again.
00:49Relocating homesteads has become our additional profession.
00:52We inherited it as locals of the River Island region.
00:55We often relocate two or three times a year.
00:58Sometimes we get lucky and we can live in one place up to a year.
01:01This fate has been following us since long before the British colonial period.
01:06But these moves are becoming more frequent as climate change makes the river less predictable.
01:14Some islanders have adapted with some success.
01:17On this char, sand-filled sacks, called geobags, have helped firm up the delicate shoreline.
01:22It's given residents enough stability to set up a volunteer-run primary school.
01:30But the river is unforgiving.
01:32And spots where there aren't yet geobags in place are crumbling, threatening the school
01:36and more.
01:37I sincerely hope we'll get more geobags to stop the erosion around the char.
01:43Then we can dream of staying here permanently, or at least for a few more years.
01:49Then we can concentrate on teaching our children.
01:52If this char washes away, the school will be gone.
01:55Their education will be ruined again.
01:57In the capital, Dhaka, it's clear to climate analyst Malik Fira A. Khan what's happening
02:04in the river country, a combination of a shifting climate and the growth of cities.
02:10So if there is a change in the rainfall or if there is a change in the pattern of the flow,
02:16so definitely that will be impacting the riverbank erosion and the accretion.
02:20The second point of the climate change is the urbanization.
02:24If there is an urbanization in the upstream part of the Jamuna River, so what happens,
02:30then the quantum of the sediment, the flow, will also increase.
02:34Some island residents hope the government will create a special ministry to handle their
02:38difficulties.
02:39But at least one government official says there's no plan to do that, leading residents
02:46of the shifting islands to their own devices as their situation becomes more urgent.
02:52That's James Lin and John Van Trieste for Taiwan Plus.
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