Khulna Division

Khulna Division guards the Sundarbans—the world's largest mangrove forest, 10,000 square kilometers of tidal waterways that shelter Bengal tigers and absorb cyclone energy that would otherwise devastate the coast. This UNESCO World Heritage site defines the division's identity and constrains its development: you cannot clear mangroves for industry without losing the storm protection that makes coastal habitation possible. Khulna city, the division's capital and Bangladesh's third-largest urban area, developed as a trading center where agricultural produce from the interior met river transport to Kolkata and beyond. The jute mills that once dominated have largely closed, victims of plastic packaging that eliminated jute's market advantage. Mongla Port provides the division's main industrial asset—Bangladesh's second busiest seaport, handling bulk cargo that Chittagong's container terminals don't prioritize. Shrimp farming transformed the coastal economy in the 1990s, but salinization of agricultural land and disease outbreaks demonstrated the ecological costs of aquaculture expansion. The Padma Bridge, completed 2022, finally connected Khulna to Dhaka by road without ferry crossings, potentially shifting economic geography by making industrial investment more feasible. Climate vulnerability remains the division's defining challenge: sea level rise threatens the Sundarbans themselves, and cyclones like Amphan (2020) demonstrated that even reduced intensity storms cause catastrophic damage. By 2026, Khulna's future depends on whether the Padma Bridge investment translates into industrial diversification, or whether the division remains economically peripheral despite its ecological significance.