1,415 rivers on the official list. At least 79 are dead or drying.
Explore where rivers are disappearing, what satellite images show, and who lives with the loss. Every figure links to its source.
Sand bars in the Padma near Rajshahi, 8 January 2024.Photo: Asker Ibne Firoz, CC BY-SA 4.0
Drag the line. See 36 years pass.
The Gorai carries the Padma's water to the southwest and the Sundarbans. On the left, March 1989; on the right, January 2025, both in the dry season. The River and Delta Research Centre lists the Gorai among the rivers that are dead or drying.[The Daily Star]
Drag the white line, or use the buttons under the picture.
Where the rivers are dying
One map, five layers of the record. Every colour comes from a published list. A river with no colour has not been assessed, which does not mean it is healthy.
- Not assessed
- Dead or drying
- Grabbed or polluted
- Shared with India or Myanmar
- Rivers per district, fewer to more
These are the named rivers OpenStreetMap draws inside Bangladesh. Blue means no published list has judged them yet. That is not the same as healthy.
The River and Delta Research Centre names 79 rivers as dead or drying up.[The Daily Star] 49 are drawn here as broken lines, 13 sit at a named place and 8 in the upazilas the official list gives. 9 cannot be placed: see why.
Pink lines are rivers that The Daily Star's World Rivers Day report of 2025 names as grabbed or polluted, division by division. 24 of them are drawn here; the rest are already on the dead-or-drying list. The source
57 rivers are shared, 54 with India and 3 with Myanmar.[Joint Rivers Commission] 49 of them rise outside Bangladesh, so what reaches the country depends on what is left upstream.[Joint Rivers Commission] The 27 we can draw are outlined.
The official list counts the most rivers in Sunamganj (113), Khulna (105) and Netrokona (92).[Ministry of Water Resources] Yet only 378 of its 1,415 rivers can be found by name on any open map.[Ministry of Water Resources]
What is killing the rivers
The causes are known, measured and named in the record. None of them is a mystery.
A river bed in the dry season, Sherpur district, 21 November 2024.Photo: Ayman Nakib Badhan, CC BY-SA 4.0
- 01
Water taken upstream
1.47 m³/sthe Teesta's lowest flow at Kaunia, in 2012[Rahman et al.]
The rivers on the RDRC list are heavily silted and dry up in the lean season, "mainly due to water diversion upstream".[The Daily Star] Of the 57 rivers shared with India and Myanmar, 49 rise outside Bangladesh.[Joint Rivers Commission] See the shared rivers
- 02
Land grabbed from the river
57,390people and organisations occupying 770 rivers[The Daily Star]
About a third were evicted in a year. The river commission's chairman said at least 10% of the grabbers were "locally and politically influential", one reason evictions failed.[The Daily Star]
- 03
Poison in the water
56 of 56rivers tested across seven divisions in 2022 were polluted[The Daily Star]
Around Dhaka alone, 490 industries are listed as polluters.[The Daily Star] The river commission says most factories have no effluent treatment plant, and many that have one do not run it.[NRCC]
- 04
Sand dug from the bed
348sand quarries declared by district administrations in 2024[District administrations]
In 25 of the 64 districts, the administration reported that no hydrographic survey was done before its quarries were declared.[District administrations]
- 05
Wetlands filled in
32.6%of Dhaka's water bodies lost between 1960 and 2008[Islam et al.]
Land filling and encroachment were the main reasons. Some 15,000 hectares of wetland and floodplain in and around Dhaka are now under concrete.[Dhaka Tribune]
Who pays for a dying river
Farmers who lose water for the dry-season crop, fishers who lose the catch, boatmen who lose the route, and families on the bank who lose the land itself.
By law, every river here is alive
In 2019 the High Court declared the Turag, and every river in Bangladesh, a living entity, with the National River Conservation Commission as its legal guardian. In 2020 the Appellate Division ordered that no river land be leased or sold.[Appellate Division]
The guardian is thin on the ground. By its own account the commission works from a rented building, with three vehicles and no boat,[NRCC] and it names interference by influential quarters as a major obstacle to evictions.[NRCC]
Parliament heard in June 2026 that an amendment is under way to make river grabbing and pollution criminal offences, with separate river courts.[United News of Bangladesh] The law is moving. Enforcement is what the rivers are waiting for.
Rivers missing from the map
Some rivers are struck off the list, some were never counted, and most of the rivers on the government's own list appear on no map anyone can open. We rebuilt that list, all 1,415 rivers, so it can finally be searched.
Everything in the record
Eleven ways into the same evidence. Every page links each figure back to its source.
Rivers of Resilience: the programme
A 25-day national advocacy programme combining a documentary film, an immersive exhibition in Dhaka, ten district screenings and five riverbank dialogues. This atlas is its evidence base.