📊 2022 Haor Flash Floods — Risk Snapshot
| 94% Of Sunamganj district submerged | 84%+ Of Sylhet district submerged |
| 4 Districts Sylhet, Sunamganj, Netrokona & Kishoreganj at risk each monsoon | 7 Months Average time haor basins stay inundated each year |
📊 Projected Rainfall & Runoff Increase in Haor Basins (Peak Monsoon)
| Decade | Additional Rainfall | Trend |
| 2020s | +40 mm | Baseline increase |
| 2050s | +90 mm | More than double |
| 2080s | +150 mm | Nearly quadruple |
Every monsoon, Bangladesh’s northeastern haor basin — a vast network of bowl-shaped wetlands across Sylhet, Sunamganj, Netrokona and Kishoreganj — fills with runoff draining down from the Meghalaya hills in India. Flooding here is not new; these depressions stay submerged for roughly seven months a year. What is new is the scale of destruction when the water arrives — and the reason lies partly in what has disappeared from the landscape.
In 2022, flash floods fed by record rainfall in Meghalaya submerged 94% of Sunamganj district and more than 84% of Sylhet district. In villages like Rangpur Bosti and Notun Jibonpur in Sylhet’s Companiganj subdistrict, homes weren’t just inundated — they were washed away entirely, destroyed beyond repair. The people living there were themselves migrants: workers from Rangpur who came for stone quarry jobs, families from Mymensingh and Narsingdi seeking a “notun jibon” — a new life — who settled on government-owned river shoals and embankments where no one had built before.
The land they settled on used to be different. Swamp forests of hijal and karoch trees, along with tall reed grass, once absorbed the force of incoming flash floods. As new communities cleared this vegetation for farming and housing, that natural buffer disappeared. “The lands of reed are now cultivated, so the water flows without any resistance when it comes down from the hills,” said Waliullah, a 70-year-old resident of Rajapur village. Research published in the BIISS Journal confirms the mechanism: forest soils and vegetation retain rainfall and slow runoff, while their removal accelerates sediment erosion that chokes rivers and turns floodwater into destructive mudflow.
Climate projections suggest this will worsen. A 2018 study forecast haor-region rainfall and runoff increasing by roughly 40mm in the 2020s, 90mm by the 2050s, and 150mm by the 2080s during peak monsoons — with peak rainfall increasingly shifting earlier, into May, ahead of the traditional mid-July to mid-August window.
The human cost compounds quickly. After losing her home in Notun Jibonpur, Hasina Begum moved to the industrial town of Narayanganj to work in a garment factory, sending her two young sons — aged 7 and 9 — to work in a yarn dyeing mill. “What would I do? We lost everything,” she said. “Now at least they are earning money, no matter how little.” Families lose homes, fall into debt, and are frequently hit again before recovery is complete.
Not every response has failed. Government buildings near Rangpur Bosti, built on raised pillars, survived the floods that swept away neighbouring homes. In Sunamganj’s Jamalganj subdistrict, seven community-managed karoch forests have continued protecting local communities from flash floods for years. The lesson from both is the same: disaster risk in the haors is not purely a climate story — it is also a land-use and planning story, one where restoring natural buffers and building with foresight can measurably change outcomes for the people living closest to the water’s edge.
