Misreading the Bengal Delta: Climate Change, Development, and Livelihoods in Coastal Bangladesh

by Camelia Dewan, K. Sivaramakrishnan (Foreword)

Perilously close to sea level and vulnerable to droughts, floods, erosions, and cyclones, Bangladesh has long been the recipient of international development funds earmarked for coping with climate change. Flawed assumptions that attribute causality solely to climate change have promoted unsustainable infrastructure such as "flood-protection" embankments. Furthermore, brackish aquaculture and high-yielding agriculture produce unintended environmental effects and further weaken livelihood capacities. At the same time, this focus on climate change adaptation diverts attention away from coastal vulnerabilities caused by underemployment, microcredit-related indebtedness, and lack of public health and educational infrastructure.

Unpacking the complexities of environmental degradation and local gendered livelihood concerns often neglected in meta-narratives of climate change, Misreading the Bengal Delta reveals that development interventions have not only contributed to but exacerbated Bangladesh's future climatic vulnerability. Combining detailed environmental history with ethnography engaging with multiple, conflicting perspectives, from poor rural coastal populations to middle-class bureaucrats, researchers, development consultants, and NGO staff, this book shows how misreading climate change has served as justification for development projects in the Global South that fail to engage with the actual needs of the communities they are intended to help.

Genres: Bangladesh, Asia

254 pages, Paperback

Published March 29, 2022

Reviews

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an important book in development studies that interrogates the narratives and ideologies informing climate adaptation in Bangladesh, an area that acts as an 'aid lab' for new forms of developments. The book explores how narratives of sea-level related salination justify political economy changes in coastal regions of Bangladesh that serve to dispossess the local populations and cause damage to the environment. The salination comes from embankments rather than rising sea-levels Dewan argues that development practitioners participate in 'climatic reductionist translations' where causality is placed with climate rather than other contextual factors due to the the fashions in development funding.

This book complements the works of Kasia Paprocki and Jason Cons well and is an absolute must read for anyone interested in development and the environment.

[DM · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really excellent intervention. The argument about climate change as a meta code as well as climate change reductive thinking was really strong, but I also appreciated the section on gender roles, masculinity, and the focus on health vulnerabilities + adulterated food. The one thing that was a little unclear was the book's critique of accumulation by dispossession and primitive accumulation (I don't know if the fact that the state is internally contradictory and heterogenous really undermines the overall point of ABD, or that in one area waters remained a commons despite export oriented activities etc.). There's also a little bit of internal contradiction here about the role of the state. Overall though a must-read and I really wonder how many academics need to write books challenging climate change victim narratives before there is real change in the media framing/public perception etc.

[Jimmy J. Crantz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not entirely sure where I stand in my thoughts about the book. I think she makes several interesting and valid points, but I don’t always feel that she succeeds in conveying them. (It took quite far into the book before I think I began to understand how embankments contributed to the salinity of the soil.) It was probably largely thanks to our lecturer that I was able to put the book into context.

I also feel quite distant from the people described in the book. Perhaps more images and explanations would have been helpful for a reader unfamiliar with the subject.

[Sagarika · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you say you care about climate change and don’t care about dismantling class structures, you can just say you enjoy gardening!