Bangladesh is going ahead with an ambitious plan to reclaim land from the sea to help relocate people who have lost their homes to sea level rise, erosion and extreme weather.

Climate change-linked natural disasters are common in Bangladesh, with cyclones and storm surges displacing huge numbers of people.

“River erosion alone claims about 20,000 acres of land in Bangladesh every year,” said Water Resources Minister Anisul Islam Mahmud.

Land reclamation would being a good solution in dealing with future climate migrant crises.

That leaves up to 200,000 people homeless each year, according to a 2013 study by the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit at the University of Dhaka and the Sussex Centre for Migration Research at the University of Sussex in Britain.

Now Bangladesh is taking back some of that land. The government plans to use the natural movement of sediment through the country’s rivers to build new land on which to house displaced communities.