Lecture-19: GEOGRAPHY OF BANGLADESH

Geographical Settings of Bangladesh The major natural assets of Bangladesh are its access to the open ocean, the tropical climate, abundance of good soil and seasonal abundance of rainfall and river flow. – Access to open sea is a major asset, the value of which is so rapidly apparent when one considers the geo- political problems of land locked countries. Through the Bay of Bengal, there is easy access to the Indian Ocean and the major lanes of international shipping. This is of paramount importance to a country, which is, and will remain, dependent on trading for the maintenance of an adequate standard of living. Secondary benefit of the ocean front is the opportunity to use marine resources. These include not only the fishes, but also salt, petroleum and other minerals.

The tropical climate is another major resource. This enables the crops to be grown throughout the year, unlike countries in high latitudes. Sunshine is abundant, even during the rainy season enabling high-yielding crops to be grown.

Good soil is a another blessings for Bangladesh. 1/3 rd of the land available for cultivation has good soils, an unusual proportion for any country, and very much higher than the average or tropical countries. Moreover, most of Bangladesh has nearly flat terrain, with only a tenth of the land hilly or mountainous.

Heavy rainfall and enormous flow of large rivers are often considered as a hindrance to development. On the contrary, this abundance of water, even though only seasonal, is very fortunate for a country that is right on the Tropic of Cancer. This is the desert belt of the northern hemisphere, and Bangladesh would have been a very dry country but for the Himalaya mountains. By intercepting the trade winds, the mountain chain induces abundant rainfall in northern Indian Subcontinent. The greenery of Bangladesh is thus an anomaly, for the Thar, Arabian and Sahara deserts are all along the same latitudes.

Physical Geography of Bangladesh The physical geography of Bangladesh is varied and has an area characterized by two distinctive features: a broad deltaic plain and a small hilly region. Roughly 80% of the landmass is made up of fertile alluvial lowland called the Bangladesh Plain. The plain is part of the larger Plain of Bengal, which is sometimes called the Lower Gangetic Plain. The only exceptions to Bangladesh's low elevations are the Chittagong hills in the southeast, the Low Hills of Sylhet in the northeast, and highlands in the north and northwest.

Climate of Bangladesh Bangladesh has a tropical monsoon climate characterized by wide seasonal variations in rainfall, high temperatures, and high humidity. Three seasons are generally recognized: a hot summer from March to June; a hot, humid and rainy monsoon season from June to November; and a warm-hot, dry winter from December to February. In general, maximum summer temperatures range between 38 and 41 °C. April is the hottest month in most parts of the country. January is the coolest month, when the average temperature for most of the country is 16–20 °C during the day and around 10 °C at night.

Economic Geography of Bangladesh Bangladesh's economy has grown roughly 6% per year since 1996 despite political instability, poor infrastructure, corruption, insufficient power supplies and slow implementation of economic reforms. Although more than half of GDP is generated through the service sector, almost half of Bangladeshis are employed in the agriculture sector with rice as the single-most-important product. Garment exports is the backbone of Bangladesh’s industrial sector.

Population is a Resource People are both producers and consumers. It requires people to create economic activities. Physical resources have a potential, but by themselves, cannot create wealth; it is human intervention that turns potential resources into real resources. Production activity requires human skills and efforts. The population of a country can thus viewed as an input into productive activity; it is a resource that transmits other resources into wealth. Many countries remain poor, because their human resource has not been properly developed. Bangladesh is one such country. We have near about 157,532,699 people which can be turned to resource instead of problem.