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Coastal regions are most susceptible to the effects of climate change. To increase infrastructure-resilience of such regions, reduce livelihood-vulnerability of people living in such regions and equip them with appropriate livelihood strategies, governments have invested heavily in coastal infrastructure such as polders. This research is focused on the polders of Bangladesh. The effectiveness of Bangladesh’s polders is disputed. No large-scale, evaluative, quantitative analysis of polders has yet been conducted. There is also only a limited number of evaluative studies on the factors which affect livelihood strategies, livelihood-vulnerability or infrastructure-resilience in polders. Therefore, the research question guiding this research is: What factors affect livelihood strategies, infrastructure-resilience, and livelihood-vulnerability in the polders of Bangladesh? These questions are answered by drawing on propositions from the Sustainable Livelihood Approach (SLA) using statistical analysis of a dataset of 137 polders. This dataset has been created from 76 survey-based interviews, secondary research and geo-spatial analysis. It is hypothesized that under different contextual settings, different combinations of livelihood resource endowments, lead to different combinations of livelihood strategies. These combinations of livelihood strategies lead to different outcomes after being moderated by different institutional, and political settings, under different contextual settings. This research demonstrates that various kinds of conflict-related and rule-making variables affect sustainability outcomes. Relationships proposed by the SLA are statistically significant and are generalizable across a large number of heterogeneous sites. Geological, geomorphological, climatic and hydrological conditions also affect livelihood decisions of polder-residents and also affect the condition of polder-infrastructure.

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Communities living in coastal regions are vulnerable to flooding, salinity intrusion, and natural hazards. This is aggravated by climate change. In order to reduce this vulnerability, governments have invested heavily in developing coastal infrastructures. One type of infrastructure development regards polders (i.e., pieces of land previously subject to permanent or temporal overflow that are now surrounded by embankments that prevent inundation). The impact of polderization on livelihood vulnerability is not straightforward and is therefore still poorly understood. In order to analyze such impacts, we present a comparative case study of four polders in Bangladesh that are characterized by varying societal circumstances, hydrological conditions, hydrological interventions, and different levels of community response to polderization. How does livelihood vulnerability vary temporally and spatially in polders, and what explains such variation? We use data collected via 162 surveys, 40 semi-structured interviews, and secondary research to analyze trends in the scores of the livelihood vulnerability index. Based on our analysis, we argue that after accounting for interactions amongst variables like hydrological conditions, hydrological interventions, community response, and other societal factors, livelihood vulnerability is lower in polders characterized by higher community involvement in using hydrological interventions to control the flow of saline water.