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Adbus Satter lives in Bonnotola in southwestern Bangladesh.
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1.
Adbus Satter lives in Bonnotola in southwestern Bangladesh.
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The small seaside village was once home to 2,000 people.
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Most of them were farmers, like Satter.
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But rising seas poisoned the soil with salt water.
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Two major storms in the last two years destroyed the mud barriers that protected the village from the sea.
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Today, only 480 people remain.
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The effects of global warming are destroying parts of Bangladesh, said Mohammad Shamsuddoha.
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He is the head of the non-profit Center for Participatory Research Development.
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"It's a grave concern for a country like Bangladesh," he said.
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He added that studies show some 30 million people may be forced to leave the country's coastal communities.
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This week, world leaders are gathered in Glasgow Scotland, for a United Nations climate conference.
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Countries like Bangladesh are pressing for more financial support to deal with the effects of climate change.
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A long-held promise for rich countries to give poor countries $100 billion each year to move to clean energy and deal with climate change has not been kept.
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Even the $80 billion that has been given is not enough to make much of a difference.
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Salt in soil has increased by 26 percent over the past 35 years.
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In 1973, 833,000 hectares of land were poisoned by sea water.
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Areas of fresh water were also poisoned.
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This grew to 1.02 million hectares in 2000, and 1.056 million hectares in 2009, reports Bangladesh's Soil Resources Development Institute.
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At Bonbibi Tola village, women gather daily at a well to collect water for cooking and drinking.
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The women walk up to 4 kilometers to get the water.
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But that will soon end.
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Wells in the area only have fresh water in the months after yearly heavy rains.
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In the summer, fresh water is difficult to find, said one of the women, Maheswari Halder.
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"This is the fate we all surrender to," she said.
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The villages lie in Bangladesh's southwestern Shyamnagar area.
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The area is home to 400,000 people.
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Officials say the government does not have the money to build desalination factories.
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"The area needs maybe 500 desalination plants. But we've only got 50 or so," said Alamgir Kabir, head of a local organization.
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Between 2000 and 2009, only six countries in the world were more affected by climate change than Bangladesh.
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That information comes from the 2021 Climate Change Performance Index, by the nonprofit group Germanwatch.
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Bangladesh cannot pay for the costs of climate change on its own.
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And it should not have to, says Abdul Kalam Azad.
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He is the country's special representative to the Climate Vulnerable Forum.
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The group is made up of countries most at risk from the effects of climate change.
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Bangladesh has done far less to damage the Earth's atmosphere than larger industrialized countries.
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Yet Bangladesh is being badly hurt, Azad said.
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In a speech Monday at the U.N. climate meeting, Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said the large industrial countries that have caused most climate change should pay for the damage.
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The 2015 Paris climate agreement said that countries should address "loss and damage" due to climate change.
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But countries such as the United States are concerned that they might be held legally responsible for the effects of a century of carbon emissions.
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40.
I'm Susan Shand.
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