Landlessness as the key challenge to climate change adaptation of the rural poor in Bangladesh: an empirical study

ABSTRACT

Bangladesh is ranked top among the locations most affected locations by extreme weather events over the last two decades and one of the potential victims of the consequences of climate change. Around 3.26 million rural Bangladeshi households are landless. These landless households usually constitute the poorest and most vulnerable groups in Bangladesh and are the first victims of climatic hazards. Despite the adaptation measures taken by the government and non-governmental organizations, landlessness generates constraints to adapt to the changing environment. Taking the above premises, this paper principally aims to unveil how landlessness poses challenges for the rural poor of Bangladesh in their endeavor to adapt to already emerging conditions of climate change. Based on qualitative interviews of relevant stakeholders, this paper finds that landlessness is a key challenge to the climate change adaptation process as it hinders livelihoods and income-generating activities of the people living in rural and coastal regions. Moreover, this study finds that landless people living near urban spaces are better placed to migrate to the cities for livelihoods and shelter. This study also adds insightful evidence suggesting that lack of access to land or land entitlement is a major setback to the existing climate change adaptation policy in Bangladesh.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• adaptation
• landlessness
• rural poor
• Bangladesh

Acknowledgment

We acknowledge the contribution of Calvin King Lam Chung, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography and Resource Management and MSSc in Global Political Economy Programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Cecile Carter, lecturer, Geography, Flinders University, Australia for their comments and editing support. We also acknowledge that the map has been taken from Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) with permission.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Haor is a low lying, bowl-shaped flood plain evolved from the tectonic depression and located in Bangladesh. This wet land area is crisscrossed by numerous rivers coming down from the hills of India with huge amount of runoff water frequently causing flash flood.