Salinization in large river deltas: Drivers, impacts and socio-hydrological feedbacks

Rahman, Mahbubur; Penny, Gopal; Mondal, M. Shahjahan; Zaman, Munir; Kryston, A.; Salehin, Mashfiqus; Nahar, Quamrun; Islam, Md. Shahidul; Bolster, Diogo; Tank, Jennifer L.; Müller, Marc F.

doi:10.1016/j.wasec.2019.100024

Cited by 60 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…The most direct mechanism driving this relationship is through the consumption of water with high salt concentration. This is a key emerging risk factor for millions of older adults globally due to salt water intrusion, dam constructions, and lake level changes (Damania et al, 2019; Nthunya, Maifadi, Mamba, Verliefde, & Mhlanga, 2018; Rahman et al, 2019; Rivett et al, 2019). Households dealing with salty water often complain of the taste and dissatisfaction with water when it is above 200 mg per liter (Benneyworth et al, 2016; World Health Organization, 2008).…”

Section: Human Biology Implications Of Water Insecuritymentioning

confidence: 99%

The toll of household water insecurity on health and human biology: Current understandings and future directions

Rosinger

Young

2020

WIREs Water

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Water is imperative for nutrition and health, economic productivity, and political stability; it also holds cultural and symbolic meanings and functions. Household water insecurity is an emerging construct that captures lived experiences with water access, use, and acceptability. Although the plausibility of household water insecurity to "get under the skin" and shape human biology is high, these relationships have not been systematically investigated. Therefore, in this article, we set out to examine how household water insecurity and allied concepts affect health and human biology throughout the life course. We first lay out the various ways that water insecurity can act as a deleterious exposure, that is, through problematic quality, excess, and shortage. Next, we posit how water insecurity directly shapes human biology, as well as indirectly, via psychosocial stress precipitating cortisol exposure, with potential intergenerational effects. We highlight a range of established and plausible biological consequences using evidence from human and animal model studies. These include diarrheal prevalence, dehydration, stunting, food insecurity, gut microbiome alteration, malnutrition, psychosocial stress, adverse birth outcomes, lower cognitive function and performance, hypertension, and chronic kidney disease. We also discuss the mechanisms by which household water insecurity may shape human biology across the life course; however, these pathways are just beginning to be understood. Longitudinal studies that simultaneously quantify household water insecurity and biological outcomes using comparable metrics in diverse environments and across generations will provide necessary evidence to establish causal relationships. Given the current global water crisis and its potential health consequences, such studies are urgently needed.

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Section: Human Biology Implications Of Water Insecuritymentioning

confidence: 99%

The toll of household water insecurity on health and human biology: Current understandings and future directions

Rosinger

Young

2020

WIREs Water

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“…In India, flow in the Hooghly has important consequences for Kolkata including siltation of the port (Ray, 1978) and salinity in drinking water (Ganguly & Roy, 2018). In Bangladesh, salinization poses great threats to health and livelihoods of delta inhabitants (Rahman et al, 2019;Salehin et al, 2018), with much of the population at risk of hypertension from excessive salt intake (Talukder et al, 2016), agrarian livelihoods in danger (Mondal et al, 2019), the largest mangrove forest in the world, the Sundarbans, at risk of disappearance (Sarker et al, 2016), and salinization strongly associated with forced internal migration (Chen & Mueller, 2018).…”

Section: The Ganges Water Sharing Agreementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The available data were sparse, and irregularities within the data set suggested possible concerns with data integrity, which we were forced to accept because of lack of alternatives. Additionally, predictions are challenged by the fact that the Ganges delta is in constant flux due to erosion, sedimentation, and other anthropogenic processes including dredging, land use change, groundwater pumping, and aquaculture practices (e.g., see Mondal et al, 2019;Rahman et al, 2019).…”

Section: Data Scarcity and Nonstationaritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Natural Experiments and Counterfactuals for Causal Assessment: River Salinity and the Ganges Water Agreement

Penny

Mondal

Biswas

et al. 2020

Water Resources Research

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The effect of environmental policy on water resources is often challenging to evaluate due to dynamic interactions between people and water, particularly in data-scarce watersheds. Increasing interactions between society and hydrology present a need to understand causal relations for improved assessment and prediction in complex human-water systems. Conventional approaches to causal assessment in hydrology are sometimes insufficient due to data scarcity or system complexity. We argue that natural experiments present a promising and complementary avenue for assessing causal relations in such systems. In this spirit, we describe a natural experiment to assess causal effects of the Ganges water treaty, between India and Bangladesh, on streamflow and channel salinity in the Ganges delta in Bangladesh. We apply causal inference to assess the effect of the treaty on streamflow and use the results to generate synthetic ensembles of streamflow and salinity under a realistic scenario (with the treaty) and a counterfactual scenario (without the treaty). We then use synthetic streamflow ensembles to model salinity ensembles. The Ganges water treaty increased dry-season streamflow in Bangladesh by approximately 18% and decreased channel salinity by approximately 10%. The treaty has the greatest effect on salinity in Bangladesh in the driest years, but the overall effect is small compared with natural variability. We show that our approach accounts for natural hydrologic variability to accurately assess the causal effect of the treaty, compared with a naive approach that greatly overestimates the effect. This research demonstrates the value of natural experiments for causal assessment in coupled human-water systems.

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“…Rising sea levels in the Bay of Bengal due to climate change and other nonclimatic factors such as local land use change and ground subsidence contribute to salinity intrusion in coastal waters of this deltaic country (Rahman et al, ; Syvitski et al, ). A number of studies suggested that drinking water salinity is associated with pre‐eclampsia and gestational hypertension in pregnant women and increased cardio‐vascular diseases and stroke risks (Khan et al, ; Khan et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Climate change has been declared by the Lancet Commission and the World Health Organization (WHO) as being "the biggest global health threat of the 21st century" (Costello et al, 2009;Rahman et al, 2019;Watts et al, 2017). The analysis of the climate-health nexus has received much attention since the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was published in 1990 (Gosling, Lowe, McGregor, Pelling, & Malamud, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Health consequences of climate change in Bangladesh: An overview of the evidence, knowledge gaps and challenges

Rahman¹,

Ahmad

Mahmud

et al. 2019

WIREs Climate Change

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Climate change affects almost all aspects of human life, including health. This is particularly true in densely populated and low lying deltas such as Bangladesh. However, the climate‐health nexus is a relatively poorly explored domain of research, which is a cause for concern given the country's intrinsic vulnerability to climatic impacts. The impact of climate change on human health and well‐being can be manifested through different pathways and can be categorized as being direct or indirect, mediated through complex biophysical and social dynamics. The direct effects of climate change that have been observed in Bangladesh include morbidity and mortality due to heat stress, cyclones, floods, droughts and other weather extremes at different spatio‐temporal scales. The indirect effects adopt more complex routes which includes, threatening food and water security due to salinity intrusion, and spread of infectious diseases due to changes in vector and pathogen ecology. Social dynamics in Bangladesh, such as those related to gender roles, poverty and power relations, also influence how the effects of climate change are experienced by different segments of the society. The Government of Bangladesh has a number of measures already in place, efforts that have been complemented by local interventions. Evidence to take robust health policy decisions related to climate change is limited and scattered, while there is a lack of multidisciplinary research efforts. Considering these limitations, generating and summarizing scientific evidence is vital for informing a resilient health system against future public health concerns in climate vulnerable countries such as Bangladesh and in other low‐income regions. This article is categorized under: Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change

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Salinization in large river deltas: Drivers, impacts and socio-hydrological feedbacks

Cited by 60 publications

References 84 publications

The toll of household water insecurity on health and human biology: Current understandings and future directions

The toll of household water insecurity on health and human biology: Current understandings and future directions

Using Natural Experiments and Counterfactuals for Causal Assessment: River Salinity and the Ganges Water Agreement

Health consequences of climate change in Bangladesh: An overview of the evidence, knowledge gaps and challenges

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