Misreading the Bengal delta: climate change, development, and livelihoods in coastal Bangladesh

Liebrand, Janwillem

doi:10.1080/03066150.2022.2100586

Cited by 10 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…For example, in coastal areas of Bangladesh in the 1960s, international experts put in embankments and sluice gates to provide flood protection and boost agriculture in the Ganges Delta. They did so without considering the massive sediment flows that meandering rivers bring, traditional water systems such as 'aushtomashi bandhs' (temporary earthen levees that prevent saltwater incursion in the dry season), fishing and agricultural livelihoods, and the inability of local communities to maintain engineered flood-control structures 10,19 . The consequences have been dire -worse floods and waterlogging, sinking of land and filling up of riverbeds, increased soil and water salinity, and degraded food and livelihood security 19 .…”

Section: Foster Justice Equity and Inclusion In Water And Climate Act...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They did so without considering the massive sediment flows that meandering rivers bring, traditional water systems such as 'aushtomashi bandhs' (temporary earthen levees that prevent saltwater incursion in the dry season), fishing and agricultural livelihoods, and the inability of local communities to maintain engineered flood-control structures 10,19 . The consequences have been dire -worse floods and waterlogging, sinking of land and filling up of riverbeds, increased soil and water salinity, and degraded food and livelihood security 19 . Many men from the region have migrated in search of jobs, increasing women's household burdens and insecurity.…”

Section: Foster Justice Equity and Inclusion In Water And Climate Act...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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As the UN meets, make water central to climate action

Rahman

Mukherji²,

Johannessen

et al. 2023

Nature

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This week in New York City, the United Nations is holding its second global Water Conference -after a gap of 46 years. At the first meeting in 1977, climate change was not even on the agenda. Today, there is stark evidence that the world is warming and that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels are to blame 1,2 . At the same time, the global water cycle has been wrecked by decades of mismanagement and intensified by climate change. As a result, 1.5 billion to 2.5 billion people live in areas where water is scarce for at least part of the year 1 -and those numbers could double by 2050. Strategies for governing water and addressing climate change in tandem must be higher on the political agenda.This matters for three reasons. First, water is the primary medium through which people experience climate change. Three-quarters of all disasters are water-related 3 . In the past year alone, massive floods have affected at least two-thirds of Pakistan's districts; extreme drought has devastated the Horn of Africa; and Europe, the western United States, Australia and parts of Latin America have experienced both extremes. Many of these events have a clear climate-change fingerprint. Along coasts Managing water and climate in tandem would protect water resources, reduce disaster risks, lower greenhouse-gas emissions and assure equitable access.

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Section: Foster Justice Equity and Inclusion In Water And Climate Act...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Foster Justice Equity and Inclusion In Water And Climate Act...mentioning

confidence: 99%

As the UN meets, make water central to climate action

Rahman

Mukherji²,

Johannessen

et al. 2023

Nature

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show abstract

“…However, by becoming a mainstream concept, vulnerability has also taken on a multitude of meanings and uses. As most development initiatives must now be translated into the 'metacode' of climate change language (Dewan, 2021), established ideas of vulnerability from development and disaster studies are now being translated into climate change adaptation efforts. Here, old meanings are mixed with new ones.…”

Section: Subjects Of Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In coastal Bangladesh, the embankment, which runs through the landscape alongside the riverbanks and coastal shores, is often an integrated part of villages. While it protects the villages against high tides and flooding (although this can be debated, see Dewan, 2021Dewan, , 2022, it often also functions as the main road and thus constitutes a central space in how villages are structured. Embankments are commonly built at a certain distance inland to avoid erosion, which means that there is often a strip of land between the embankment and the shore.…”

Section: Gendered Riskscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women as subjects of risk in Bangladesh’s coastal riskscapes

Evertsen

2023

The Sociological Review

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In this article, I examine the assumptions underlying the idea of women as vulnerable and at risk, and how this understanding contributes to shaping practices of climate change adaptation. The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in the expert community in Dhaka and in a climate change adaptation field site in coastal Bangladesh. Following Ananya Roy’s work, I understand coastal Bangladesh to be a riskscape, a geographical space suffused with imaginations of anticipated risks that must be managed through disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Roy further argues that riskscapes create new subjects of risk, and that such subjects are highly gendered because development has tended to focus on poor women ‘in very specific ways’. In this article, I build on Roy’s insights to explore how women are constructed as ‘subjects of risk’ in climate change adaptation. I also show how climate change adaptation, in becoming the new buzzword for development, continues to focus on poor women in very specific ways, which are applied to fit with the climate change ‘metacode’. While well-intended, the understanding of women as subjects of risk is imbued with ambivalence, because it may contribute to supporting structures that make women vulnerable by normalizing relations of risk.

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“…Unfortunately, the long‐term and interactive nature of these issues is overlooked due to the ‘climate reductive discourse’ of migration and development interventions (Dewan, 2023). The government of Pakistan argues that the 2022 floods created a cascade of economic, political and social crises (GoP, 2022) yet it underplays the role of long‐standing energy and water policy in exacerbating rural poverty and rampant food insecurity.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate, floods, and migration in Pakistan

Kamal

2023

International Migration

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This commentary offers a glimpse into the complex landscape of climate‐induced migration in rural Pakistan. By shedding light on the interplay between gradual ecological shifts and rapid climate shocks, it exposes the misalignment between climate policies and the mobility strategies of marginalized communities. The vulnerabilities of rural Pakistanis facing climate and ecological shocks, like the 2022 floods, are rooted in the historical mismanagement of land and water commons. The current focus on infrastructure‐heavy interventions does not address the rigidity introduced by colonial and postcolonial interventions, which have undermined the seasonal mobility and fluidity of pastoralists, peasants, fishers and the landless in rural Pakistan. Thinking climate and migration together requires us to consider the socio‐economic constraints and drivers of migration, burgeoning political conflicts, and the ecological consequences of infrastructure‐heavy climate adaptation strategies by global investors and the Pakistani state.

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Misreading the Bengal delta: climate change, development, and livelihoods in coastal Bangladesh

Cited by 10 publications

References 2 publications

As the UN meets, make water central to climate action

As the UN meets, make water central to climate action

Women as subjects of risk in Bangladesh’s coastal riskscapes

Climate, floods, and migration in Pakistan

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