Education

Climate change is front page news in Bangladesh on a near-daily basis, and the English-language newspaper The Daily Star is averaging two to three articles per day on the subject. As Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina traveled to Geneva this week to attend the World Climate Conference-3, coverage has focused on her trip. But there is also a sense in Bangladesh that climate change is putting the country on the international map, so to speak, and Bangladeshis are very much interested in getting that recognition.

Bangladesh is a massive river delta, and river erosion is taking more than 100 sq. km. of land per year. According to local officials, it displaces more than 100,000 riverside residents per year, and the pace is accelerating, fed by melting glaciers and monsoons upstream. We visited the massive Jamuna River near Sirajganj in the northwest corner of the country and saw where large chunks of the dike and roadway had collapsed just a few weeks earlier.

It is monsoon season in Bangladesh, making the delicate balance between water and land more tenuous than ever. It was raining heavily when we disembarked from the ferry on Bhola Island and it continued to rain for much of the day. South of Dhaka some 205 km. (or 11 hours by ferry), Bhola is caught between the rising saltwater of the Bay of Bengal to the south and the ominous churning of the Meghna River to the east.

I am writing from the overnight ferry from Dhaka to Bhola island. Glenn and I spent the morning shooting interviews and b-roll footage at a dismal slum in Dhaka that is home to over 1000 displaced people from the island of Bhola. Bhola, one of six southern islands in Bangladesh, is home to 1.6 million people. But many thousands of people are leaving Bhola as erosion caused by rising sea levels and strong currents swallows the land. Some predict half the island could be gone in 30 years time.

We will be heading off for Bangladesh on Aug. 22 to explore the "ground zero" of climate change and innovative adaptive strategies they are developing there. We will be traveling to Bhola, a large coastal island that has reportedly lost half its land mass over the past decade, to report on the "children of climate change" whose families are battling to stay there. We have just secured an interview with Dr.

As the first notes of the Quran, sung by a diminutive imam in an embroidered prayer cap, fill the Westin Bellevue's ornate Grand Ballroom, a sea of hands moves to cover heads.

At the hotel, 450 people from Seattle's growing Pakistani community have gathered to help the troubled country they left behind.

It's been a tough year for Pakistan.

Thirteen-year-old Humiera Kausar's oversized sneakers hurry over piles of granite boulders and through scrubby pines bristling with last night's rain. A headscarf and pink shawl are wound tightly around her small frame to protect against the thick mist that has settled over her high mountain village.

Her school uniform, traditional baggy pants and a long tunic, is glowing white and Humiera is careful not to soil the cuffs as she quickly makes her way along a rugged green spine of the Karakoram foothills. She's late for school and still almost four miles away.

Shaun McCanna, for the Pulitzer Center

Despite ankle deep garbage, charcoal-scribbled graffiti of machine guns and the scorched remains of squatters' fires, the dusty green chalkboard still reads "December 2, 2006," the last day that classes were held in the primary school wing of Mirza Adam Khan, a government-run compound of schools in the poor and violence plagued Karachi neighborhood of Lyari.

Shaun McCanna, for the Pulitzer Center

Shaun McCanna, for the Pulitzer Center

Shaun McCanna, for the Pulitzer Center