Migrant Community of Nijhum Dwip: Comparative Importance of Livelihood Capitals to Adapt in This Island

Abstract

The study attempts to explore the factors behind selecting Nijhum Dwip for migration and perceive the relative importance of livelihood capitals (Human, physical, natural, financial and social) for the climate change adaptation of migrant community. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches are followed in this study. Data are collected from primary and secondary sources. The study recognizes, people are moving to Nijhum Dwip rather shifting to main land despite facing numerous disasters like cyclone, river bank erosion, flood, storm surge, sea level rise, salinity intrusion and so on. This is mainly due to low price of land and no alternative place to shift. They consider physical capital as the strongest livelihood capital to adapt in this island followed by human capital, natural capital, financial capital as well as social capital are also suitable option for enhancing the adaptation of migrant community to settle there.
 Asiat. Soc. Bangladesh, Sci. 44(2): 127-136, December 2018

Land Cover and Coastline Change Assessment of Nijhum Dwip, Bangladesh, using Geospatial Analysis

“…might be another choice but people are moving to the Nijhum Dwip rather than shifting to the mainland despite facing numerous disasters like cyclones, riverbank erosion, flood, storm surge, sea-level rise, salinity intrusion, etc. considering livelihood opportunities, low price of land and have no other options (Kumar and Luna, 2018). Although, primarily the island was just an afresh settled sediment deposited landmass in the Meghna estuary without human population.…”

“…Usually, land use changes indicating the land utilization by people (Anderson et al, 1976; Di Gregorio and Jansen, 1997; Lillesand and Kiefer, 2002) when change detection is practicing to identify the spatial changes of the surface of the earth at diverse temporal ranges (Singh, 1989 Rahman et al, 2018). Instead of this, very few studies noted here considered population migration, risk, vulnerability, and livelihood issues (Hossain et al, 2013;Islam et al, 2015;Kumar and Luna, 2018;Tanim et al, 2013). As study concerning Spatio-temporal changes on land cover and coastline of the Nijhum Dwip is less frequent, the present investigation is broadly an attempt to detect the land cover changes and evaluate the lateral shifting of coastline from 1980 to 2018 of Nijhum Dwip, Bangladesh.…”