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

Bangladesh is a top recipient of development aid for climate change adaptation, but adaptation projects may not address local needs and concerns. Misreading the Bengal Delta critiques development narratives of Bangladesh as a climate change victim and examines how development actors repackage colonial-era modernizing projects as climate-adaptation solutions, which can have severe environmental effects. The book also highlights the entwined environmental crisis in Bangladesh, extending to coastal vulnerabilities and structural inequalities.

Format: Hardback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 14 December 2021
Publisher: University of Washington Press

Bangladesh, located perilously close to sea level and vulnerable to floods, erosion, and cyclones, is one of the top recipients of development aid earmarked for climate change adaptation. However, the extent to which adaptation projects address local needs and concerns remains a subject of debate. Combining environmental history and ethnographic fieldwork with development professionals, rural farmers, and landless women, Misreading the Bengal Delta critically examines development narratives of Bangladesh as a climate change victim. It explores how development actors reinterpret colonial-era modernizing projects, which have caused severe environmental effects, as climate-adaptation solutions. Seawalls intended to mitigate against cyclones and rising sea levels, for instance, end up silt up waterways and induce drainage-related flooding. Other adaptation projects, such as saline aquaculture and high-yield agriculture, pose threats to soil fertility, biodiversity, and livelihoods.

Bangladesh's environmental crisis extends beyond climate change, entwined with coastal vulnerabilities such as underemployment, debt, and lack of universal healthcare. This timely book analyzes how development actors create flawed causal narratives linking their interventions in the environment and society of the Global South to climate change. Such misreadings risk exacerbating climatic threats and structural inequalities.

Misreading the Bengal Delta is available in an open access edition through the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot, thanks to the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The open access edition can be accessed at DOI: 10.6069/9780295749624.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780295749600