{"id":26565,"date":"2018-01-22T07:31:32","date_gmt":"2018-01-22T07:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=26565"},"modified":"2018-01-22T07:31:32","modified_gmt":"2018-01-22T07:31:32","slug":"rohingya-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2018\/01\/22\/rohingya-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The risk of landslides in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh"},"content":{"rendered":"

The risk of landslides in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh<\/h4>\n

One of the great tragedies of the last two years has been the dreadful, systematic ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people in Myanmar \/ Burma.\u00a0 The murders, assaults, rapes and thefts are well-documented<\/a>; the consequence has been that over 600,000 people have fled across the border into Bangladesh.\u00a0 There they have been forced to build refugee camps in the vicinity of Cox’s Bazar, turning forested hillslopes into basic living spaces.\u00a0 At least 300,000 Rohingya people people are thought to be living on slopes.\u00a0 The hilly regions of Bangladesh are prone to landslides in the monsoon season<\/a>.\u00a0 Unsurprisingly, there are growing concerns about the threat to these people posed by landslides in the next monsoon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The scale of the change of the landscape is simply extraordinary.\u00a0 Over the weekend I took a look at the Planet Labs<\/a> imagery of the area around the refugee camp at Balukhali, so the south of Cox’s Bazar.\u00a0 This is a 3 m resolution Planet Labs image<\/a> of this area, collected on 25th November 2016.\u00a0 Balukhali can be seen in the southeast corner; most of the landscape is covered in forest.\u00a0 The image is about 4.5 km from east to west:-<\/p>\n

\"Rohingya\"

The area to the north of Balukhali in November 2016. Planet Labs image<\/a>, collected 25th November 2016.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

This is the same area in a Planet Labs image collected on 20th January 2018 (i.e. two days ago):-<\/p>\n

\"Rohingya\"

The area to the northwest of of Balukhali, showing the Rohingya refugee camp. Planet Labs image<\/a> collected 20th January 2018.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The change is extraordinary.\u00a0 A vast area of forest has been removed and converted to temporary accommodation.\u00a0 The landscape impact is immense; it is hard to imagine to conditions.\u00a0 The Daily Observer has an image<\/a> of the camp, with a dramatic illustration of the landslide potential:-<\/p>\n

\"Rohingya\"

Landslide potential in the Rohingya refugee camp at Balukhali. Image via The Daily Observer<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Note the buildings at the crown and toe of active landslides.\u00a0 Whilst the threat from the landslides pales into insignificance alongside the dreadful events of the last two years for the Rohingya people, there is the potential for substantial loss of life from multiple landslides in the next few rainy seasons.<\/p>\n

Reference<\/h4>\n

Planet Team (2017). Planet Application Program Interface: In Space for Life on Earth. San Francisco, CA.\u00a0https:\/\/api.planet.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of the Rohingya people, forced to leave Myanmar \/ Burma by ethnic cleansing, are now living in landslide prone locations in Bangladesh. Dramatic satellite images from Planet Labs illustrate the magnitude of the threat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":26573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7203],"tags":[634,302,469,979,301,11437,11441,72],"class_list":["post-26565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-planet-labs","tag-bangladesh","tag-burma","tag-featured","tag-monsoon","tag-myanmar","tag-planet-lab","tag-refugee","tag-south-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}