Drastic Groundwater Depletion In Cox’s Bazar: Struggles Of Host And Rohingya Communities – Analysis
By Zulker Naeen
Cox’s Bazar, located in southeastern Bangladesh along the Bay of Bengal, is home to the longest unbroken sea beach in the world and has become the site of the largest refugee settlement due to the mass displacement of the Rohingya people fleeing persecution in Myanmar. The region is also a stark example of human-induced climate change, with deforestation, soil erosion, and freshwater depletion escalating due to the refugee crisis and broader environmental pressures.
Much attention has been given to the living conditions within the refugee camps; however, the environmental crisis affecting these host populations, particularly regarding water security, agricultural sustainability, and long-term ecological resilience, the silent suffering of the host communities remains largely unreported.
Water scarcity has become one of the most pressing issues in Cox’s Bazar, as both the refugee and host communities struggle to access clean and safe drinking water. Extracting groundwater using existing shallow tube wells has become a challenge in Cox’s Bazar as water levels continue to drop rapidly due to the burden of the Rohingya influx, the needs of over a million refugees further depleting groundwater and making it harder for locals to source water for daily use.
Drastic Groundwater Decline Near Rohingya Camps
Rohingya populations have fluctuated in Cox’s Bazar since 1991, but the massive influx of refugees since August 2017 has significantly intensified pressures on host communities.
Since August 25, 2017, over 750,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
As of 31 July 2023, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Bangladesh and the Government of Bangladesh had jointly registered 962,416 refugees in the country.
Now the daily water demand for nearly 1.1 million Rohingyas in the 34 highly congested camps of two upazilas was 22 million litres, but due to the ongoing water crisis, their access has now dropped to just 15 litres per person.
To supply water to the Rohingyas, around 5,731 swallow tube wells were set up in the area at different slopes in the camp in 2017, resulting in excessive water withdrawal from the shallow aquifer and drying up the groundwater, this excessive dependence on groundwater is lowering the water levels in the area. In the meantime, many tube wells have already dried up and pondered the groundwater crisis. The crisis becomes deep during the summer and winter seasons.
With nearly 15 million litres of groundwater being drawn each day in the Rohingya refugee camps.
UNHCR continues to closely track groundwater supplies, the refugees were provided with water purifying tablets and containers for safer water collection and storage.
29% of refugees now use piped distribution systems to access chlorinated water, while the rest get their water from tube wells.
Simultaneously, groundwater contamination is a significant concern to the experts in this area of the cause of leakage, seepage, and overflow. Thousands of non-functional latrines and tube wells contaminate water.
The experts of the Environmental Department of Bangladesh examined that 70% of the groundwater in the camp area is polluted.
Furthermore, poor waste management in the camp area is affecting the environment.
Alarming Decline in Freshwater Resources
The Rohingya influx has accelerated groundwater depletion in Teknaf and Ukhia, causing tube wells to dry up, whereas previously, shallow wells sufficed to meet water demand.
The water level is declining across various unions in eight upazilas, including Cox’s Bazar town, with the situation being particularly severe in the surrounding areas of Cox’s Bazar city, Ukhia, Teknaf, and Chakaria.
The groundwater level in Cox’s Bazar’s Kalatali area has dropped by 20 to 30 feet, rendering many water pumps in over three hundred residential hotels in Sagarpar have been lying unused.
People here in Cox’s Bazar have been suffering a lot as the groundwater level is dropping by 10-15 feet every year.
Information from Cox’s Bazar Municipality and Public Health Engineering Department said many tube wells have lying unused in different areas of Cox’s Bazar town. Even 10 years ago, the groundwater level was found to be between 120 and 150 feet, now it has to go deeper than 300 to 500 feet.
A report in 2023 states that around 23% of the 31,000 tube wells in Cox’s Bazar-approximately 7,000- have become useless, even though water is not available in at least several thousand tube wells.
However, day by day the water level in Cox’s Bazar is going down due to the felling of trees, cutting of mountains, digging of canals, filling of ponds and reservoirs, excessive use of underground water, construction of unplanned structures and climate change. As a result, there is a shortage of drinking water.
The water levels around the Rohingya camps in Teknaf have fallen by around 5 to 9 metres, it reveals that freshwater options are extremely limited, where the bedrock surface at 25-30 metres below ground level makes deep tube-wells a costly option for the locals.
Faecal contamination is now present in more than four-fifths of sources, and 93 hectares of arable land around the Rohingya camps cannot be cultivated. An additional 380 hectares of land cannot be cultivated owing to a lack of water for irrigation.
Host Communities in Peril: The Growing Water Crisis
Host communities in areas adjacent to the Rohingya camps are facing a severe water crisis, as thousands of tube wells have dried up, forcing some villages in Teknaf to drill as deep as 500 feet to access groundwater.
Even after three attempts, extracting water by digging 800 meters proves impossible in some cases, forcing residents to depend on water pipelines from nearby villages to secure fresh drinking water.
It reveals that freshwater options are extremely limited in Teknaf, where the bedrock surface lies 25-30 meters below ground, making deep tube wells costly for locals.
Almost all shallow tube wells in the district have become useless as salty and muddy water rises from them, forcing people to rely on ponds, which are frequently contaminated by salt water and eventually become unfit for human consumption.
Residents are now compelled to invest at least Tk 1,50,000 (USD 1,230) for deep tube wells, a significant increase from just Tk 15,000 (USD 1,23) for shallow tube wells. This dramatic shift is driving groundwater extraction at unsustainable levels, far surpassing the natural rate of replenishment.
Especially, women and children in Cox’s Bazar trek kilometres daily from their houses to a local pond for water, a routine struggle that has been taken for granted, exacerbating a water crisis where millions lack adequate access to clean water.
Many host community households now rely on water pipelines from distant villages, while traditional shallow tube wells no longer provide sufficient water.
Increased dependency on bottled water or water treatment solutions, leads to higher living costs. The economic pressure on families is increasing while buying water.
Vulnerability of Coastal Aquifers to Saltwater Intrusion
The coastal aquifers in Cox’s Bazar are highly vulnerable to saltwater intrusion, exacerbated by the overuse of groundwater resources for tourism and local needs.
Saltwater intrusion from the Bay of Bengal, Bakkhali River, Kohelia River, and Mathamuhuri River is increasingly salinizing groundwater in the coastal part of Chakaria Upazila, driven by rising sea levels and declining river navigability.
During a study, one-third of tube wells contained sodium levels that exceeded the tolerable limit for taste, particularly during the dry season, which is the most salt-intensive period.
The salinity level seemed to vary depending on the depth of tube wells, and those deeper than 200 m were likely to be salinity-free. Even if households felt their water was too salty during a certain period of the year, they used other households’ tube wells for a while and managed during the most salt-intensive time.
However, analysis of the spatial pattern of the depth of tube wells showed, that some communities may suffer more broadly from saline water and need to get water from a long distance away.
It is alarming that salinity in Bangladesh, including non-coastal areas, has grown by roughly 26% in the past 35 years. People living in salinity-prone areas are 10% more likely to suffer from water-borne diseases than people living in low-salinity areas.
The alarming decline in freshwater resources near the Rohingya camps, as revealed by recent studies, underscores the severity of the crisis.
Drastic groundwater depletion, compounded by the vulnerability of coastal aquifers to saltwater intrusion, is pushing both host and refugee communities toward an uncertain future.
Without urgent interventions, the worsening water crisis will continue to threaten livelihoods, public health, and the fragile ecosystem of Cox’s Bazar.
Zulker Naeen is a research coordinator at the Center for Critical and Qualitative Studies at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. He is reachable at zulker.naeen@ulab.edu.bd
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