GovTwin / Institution

Kamalganj (Moulvibazar)

Local Gov

A tea-estate and forest upazila of Moulvibazar home to Lawachara National Park, with extensive plantation labour and mixed evergreen hill forest.

Wealth rank 187/452 (1 = poorest upazila)

Indicators: Meta RWI (HDX); ERA5-Land; MODIS; Sentinel-5P; VIIRS night-lights; GHSL; Hansen v1.11; CHIRPS v2.0. Exposure: GloFAS v2.1, FABDEM, MODIS LST, ACAG PM2.5, WorldPop 2020.

Problems and issues

  1. environment The Lawachara-area mixed evergreen and hill forest faces encroachment from estate and settlement expansion that eats into natural forest cover. So what: Forest clearing erodes biodiversity and the watershed protecting tea and wetlands. Source: Bangladesh Forest Department
  2. social The upazila's tea estates concentrate a large, historically marginalized plantation workforce whose deprivation is masked by a near-median average wealth (RWI -0.117, national rank 187 of 452). So what: Estate workers face acute hardship behind the district's median figures. Source: Meta Data for Good Relative Wealth Index (HDX)
  3. climate disaster In a warming, high-rainfall basin, heat and rainfall stress press on hill tea cultivation while lowlands face haor flash-flood risk. So what: Climate stress threatens the single warming-sensitive cash crop. Source: Department of Disaster Management

Probable solutions