Can be erased from the map – protected by a meter-high rampart

CAIN MARY.

The villagers follow the cyclone with their eyes glued to their phones.

If it strikes during low tide, they are saved.

If it comes six hours later, it’s all over.

The ferry drifts upstream with the tide. The waves lap against the open wooden hull, a motorbike is on the verge of swaying.

We are on the edge of the Sundarban mangrove swamp, right where the broad Pasur River meets the sea – in a place where climate change is felt more clearly than perhaps anywhere else on earth.

It is the fourth day after the cyclone and we are on our way to the affected village of Kainmary.

The ferry across the Pasur river. Photo: Lotte Fernvall

For a week the villagers knew that the storm, which had been named Sitrang, was heading towards Kainmary. Those with smart phones followed the drama in real time: the reports of how the cyclone built up over the Bay of Bengal and the maps that predicted its passage over land.

In each scenario, their village would be hit first and hardest.

The alarm went off and all 450 families had to be evacuated immediately. Together with goats and chickens, they squeezed into the village’s most stable building, the school.

We have traveled to Bangladesh to examine how the thousands of fast fashion factories are destroying the country’s environment. Even Swedish H&M’s factories have been shown to release polluted water, contrary to the fashion chain’s promises to customers.

Still, we haven’t talked about fast fashion’s very highest price. Climate emissions.

Fast fashion stands for upward ten percent of all carbon dioxide emissions, more than all aviation and all shipping combined. Emissions continue to grow, at a time when every curve must go down if the world is to meet the 1.5 degree target.

A mud wall will protect the village of Kainmary against the rising sea. Photo: Lotte Fernvall

Until the very end, Joty Purmina, 15, had studied for the English exam that would determine whether she could continue in high school and follow her dream of becoming a nurse. Now she sat inside the overcrowded school and wondered if there would be a second chance. Little sister Sumaiya, 10, tugged at her long metal necklace, overcome with worry.

Next door was also neighbor Kamala Sarker, 33, a usually cheerful and resolute woman and something of a leader in the village. As a child, she was never afraid of cyclones, because they did not have the same power. Now she wondered if they were all going to die.

The windowpanes shook, drops of water pressed in.

The villagers sang and prayed together, loudly, as if to brace themselves.

Even the children knew what was at stake. In the delta country, the difference between ebb and flow is three meters. If the cyclone culminated at low tide, the village would be fine. At high tide, six hours later, it would all be over.

All night they sat there, tightly pressed together, in the gap between life and death.

Photo: Paul Wallander

In Bangladesh, 166 million people live squeezed into a third of Sweden’s area. Along with China, the country is the major fast fashion manufacturing country in the world. At the same time, it is one of the countries that is very most vulnerable for climate change.

Rivers of meltwater from the Himalayas pour down from the north. The rising sea pushes up from the south.

All while the cyclones are increasing. And more dangerous.

The fashion industry likes to talk about the millions of jobs created for poor women here. But the future that is built with one hand is constantly at risk of being destroyed with the other.

We walk along the village path, on top of the mud embankment that was built to keep the sea away. It smells salty and depopulated.

Several trees have fallen over and some houses have been demolished. But the village had unimaginable luck. The cyclone culminated when the water was almost at its lowest. Only about thirty people died, and none here.

You can observe the earth from above. It is a blue planet.

But only one percent of all water is potable. It must be used for food, drink, laundry, agriculture and industry.

With the climate crisis, major rivers will dry up while the heat is turned up. The lack of fresh water is expected to become increasingly acute.

Kamala Sarker, 33, with husband Martin and son Veehas. Photo: Lotte Fernvall

One eighth of all land in the area has already been lost. The salt water penetrates everywhere.

Elsewhere, sea level rise is measured in millimeters. Here, where the river meets the sea, it is about three centimeters a year, according to NASA analysis.

Kamala Sarker meets us dressed in a red sari and gold rings in her ears. For her, this is not an abstract future threat.

– When I was little, we all grew rice here. The coconut palms were full of nuts and it was enough to reach out to grab a banana.

Now the single nuts are rotting up in their palm trees. The banana plants have long since stopped bearing fruit. The rice fields are stained red and dead.

She points out what was once her garden. The meadow where the children played football in the evenings and the place where the Catholic church was located. Even a few years ago, when 16-year-old son Veehas was small, everything was still there. Now all that remains is a light brown, swirling mirror of water.

By the year 2050, one fifth of Bangladesh could be under water. The World Bank warns that more than 13 million people by then may have been forced to flee.

Kamala moves away the bottles of nail polish, her only luxury. Husband Martin, 42, sets out tea and some factory-made biscuits. Everything that is eaten must now be bought at the market.

– If we could, we would move to a place that feels safe, she says. But we have no money and no options.

From the wall, a chalk-white Jesus, next to an equally chalk-white lamb, looks down from his painting.

We fall silent. Listening.

Hear the waves lapping against the upper edge of the mud bank. The sound of the embankment slowly eroding down.

Every year the water rises another three centimeters. Photo: Lotte Fernvall

Every Swede emits around 3.5 tonnes carbon dioxide per year. Kamala and her compatriots less than a fifth as much. If you then consider the clothes that are manufactured here, but exported to us, the gap grows even more.

The band is strengthened. Our consumption and our lifestyle. Their misfortune.

Joty comes over with little sister Sumaiya. She has not yet been notified if she can retake her exam.

The neighbors talk about the constant heat, which has replaced the previous seasons. About the rains that don’t come as they should. About the epidemics of stomach diseases in the wake of salt intrusion and the wave of heart diseases. Shortly before the cyclone, Kamala’s 62-year-old father suffered a stroke.

– This is new for us. Dad survived, but he’s not the same.

Kamala Sarker says she would like to move, but without money the possibilities are slim. Photo: Lotte Fernvall

Another UN climate summit is being held. The Swedish researcher Johan Rockström warns that Greenland’s ice sheet could reach its breaking point in just 15 years, with seven meters of sea level rise as a result. The world’s leaders are asking: how will we rich compensate the poor who suffer from our emissions?

Ballads pour out of a village radio. It’s time to say goodbye.

We pass the burial site, now under water. The dead banana groves.

The path on the embankment has been filled with mud, which glistens in the midday sun. It is important not to slip. The tide is creeping up by the minute, has reached the edge now.

You can see it from the country road, across the destroyed rice fields, from several kilometers away. A huge chimney rising in concrete.

The coal-fired power plant in Khulna is being built with Indian money. The project has been criticized by the UN, delayed during covid, but opens next year. The country must develop, the constant the power outages in the textile factories is remedied and the export income secured, at the price of five million tons of coal burned a year and even more spoiled water.

We look around. Draws the suspicious eyes of the guards on us. Turns back to the car and leaves the place under the portal with the text: Committed to clean power.

The coal-fired power plant in Khulna will open in 2023. Photo: Lotte Fernvall

The sun bears down on us with its full equatorial power, as if to remind us that there were other ways of generating energy.

We pass wetlands and mangroves, nature that can protect us against climate change and extreme weather, but which is now being destroyed.

A cargo ship, loaded with fast-fashion clothes, heads south through the delta towards the rising world sea, and the end customers on the other side of the world.

Everything seems so peaceful. You cannot guess what is happening.

The protective dykes about cracks. The downfall in slow motion.

Aftonbladet’s Staffan Lindberg and Lotte Fernvall on location in Bangladesh. Photo: Lotte Fernvall