Chapter 5 Climate Change and Migration in Bangladesh: Empirically Derived Lessons and Opportunities for Policy Makers and Practitioners Johannes Luetz Bangladesh: Demographic, Geographic and Climate Change Issues In Bangladesh human movement is influenced by environmental and climatic change, together with traditional labour and seasonal migration patterns. To introduce the migration context in Bangladesh this section will commence with a discussion of the country’s contextual backdrop regarding relevant demographic, geographic and environmental issues, including natural disasters. Discounting city states Bangladesh has the highest population density in the world. With an average 1229 people living together on each available square kilometre of land, Bangladesh is home to more people than live in all of Russia combined (World Bank 2011a, pp. 344–345; Belt 2011, p. 64). Bangladesh is also among the poorest and most low-lying coastal countries in the world. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 2011, p. 126), Bangladesh is a Low Human Development country with approximately 150+ million citizens and a rank of 146 (out of 187 countries) on the Human Development Index (HDI). In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), 49.6% of the population live below the international poverty line of US$1.25 per day (UNDP 2011, p. 144; attributed to World Bank 2011a, p. 3461), down from 57.8% in the year 2000 (ibid.2). In 2005, the most recent survey year available, 81.3% of the population lived on less than 1Data from 2005. 2See also http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/country-profiles. J. Luetz (&) CHC Higher Education, Brisbane, Carindale, Australia e-mail: [email protected] J. Luetz University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia © Springer International Publishing AG 2018 59 W. Leal Filho and J. Nalau (eds.), Limits to Climate Change Adaptation, Climate Change Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64599-5_5 60 J. Luetz US$2 per day (ibid.). Moreover, 57.8% of the population live in “multidimensional poverty”, and 26.2% live in “severe poverty” (ibid.3) Although poor by these standards, Inman (2009) asserts that “the country has left behind its earlier repu- tation as an ‘international basket case’, a term once unkindly bestowed on it by a United States government official. Its economy is growing fast, the poverty rate is falling and the average life span has now stretched to 63 years” (Inman 2009, p. 18). In recent years improvements in human well-being have no doubt been made, for example “the fertility rate plunged from 6.6 births per woman in 1975 to 2.4 in 2009” (UNDP 2011, p. 9), and life expectancy at birth was most recently assessed in the Human Development Report at 68.9 years (UNDP 2011, p. 129), up from 55.2 years in 1980 (UNDESA 2011). Since coastal areas abound with resources and trading opportunities, for mil- lennia human populations all over the world have preferred to live “within 100 kilometres of coasts and near major rivers” (Small and Nicholls 2003; Small and Cohen 2004, cited in McGranahan et al. 2007a, p. 18). With a worldwide length of one million kilometres—or approximately 25 times the Earth’s circumference— coastlines and their adjacent regions “are of extreme importance for humankind” (WBGU 2006, p. 40). Research by McGranahan et al. (2007a) assessed the vul- nerabilities of coastal communities to risks resulting from climate change and defined a so-called Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ) as “the contiguous area along the coast that is less than 10 metres above sea level” (p. 17). The research found that these LECZ constitute only 2% of the Earth’s land mass but contain 10% of the world’s population, and 13% of the world’s urban population, thus having a higher rate of urbanisation than the rest of the world (ibid., p. 17; see also Brahic 2007). With more than 600 million people worldwide living in the zone, 75% of whom in Asia (ibid., p. 17), and “21% of the world’s human population [living] less than 30 km from the sea” (Cohen et al. 1997; Gommes et al. 1998, cited in WBGU 2006, p. 40), the popularity of coastal regions is perhaps best evidenced by pop- ulation growth rates of “twice the global average” (Bijlsma et al. 1996, cited in WBGU 2006, p. 40). Bangladesh exemplifies this trend: “[b]etween 1990 and 2000, the populations in the 0–10 m zones of Bangladesh … grew at more than twice the national population growth rate” (McGranahan et al. 2007b). According to the United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA), the coming two decades will see Asia’s urban population increase from 1.36 billion in 2000 to 2.64 billion in 2030 (UNFPA 2007). UN Habitat predicts that 95% of the world’s urban growth in the next two decades “will be absorbed by cities of the developing world, which are least equipped to deal with rapid urbanization” (UN Habitat 2006, p. 2). In short, much of the developing world is urbanising at an unprecedented rate, and it is doing so along, near or towards the coast. According to Small and Nicholls (2003), “[b]y the year 2030 approximately 50% of the world population could be living within 100 km of the coasts” (WBGU 2006, p. 40). 3“Population in severe poverty: Percentage of the population in severe multidimensional poverty— that is, those with a deprivation score of 50 percent or more.” (UNDP 2011, p. 145). 5 Climate Change and Migration in Bangladesh: Empirically Derived … 61 The economic boom of countries in Asia4 has been attributed in part to policies that promote coastal development and thereby encourage coast-ward human migration. In Bangladesh millions live in coastal proximity: 46% of the population of Bangladesh (more than 62 million) live within 10 m above sea level (McGranahan et al. 2007a, p. 26), and “approximately 50 million people live below five metres above sea level” (Maplecroft 2007b, p. 14). However, rapid urbanisa- tion in coastal zones holds multiple risks. It exposes people to seaward hazards such as floods, cyclones, storm surges and sea level rise, while concurrently degrading sensitive ecosystems like mangrove forests and coral cover that traditionally pro- tected these coastlines. At the same time coastal urbanisation is both rapid and often self-reinforcing: the more urbanised a coastal community becomes, the more it draws other would-be migrants into the suction of its magnetic field. The net effect can be an even further increase in the rate of coastal population growth and hap- hazard development practice in marginal environments exposed to seaward hazards like king tides, cyclonic surges, coastal erosion, land loss, etc. (McGranahan et al. 2007a, b; Nicholls and Small 2002). Several big cities in South Asia (e.g., Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, Kolkota, Chennai, etc.) extend into the LECZ and face challenges which are exacerbated by the fast pace of informal or unplanned urbanisation (McGranahan et al. 2007a; Brahic 2007). During fieldwork media reports highlighted “unplanned develop- ment” and consequent problems as matters of growing concern (Shyamol 2011 p. 5; Ahsan 2011; The Independent 2011a, b). For example, Ahsan (2011)5 mentions unplanned squatter settlements in Dhaka having resulted in virtually “the destruc- tion of almost the entire natural sewage system of the city” (p. 1), and leaving it essentially “developed beyond reclamation” (p. 4). Similarly, research by the World Bank identified Dhaka as the fastest growing mega-city in the world, with an estimated 300,000-400,000 new migrants, mostly poor, arriving to the city annually, [aggravating] large slums, poor housing, excessively high land prices, traffic congestion, water shortages, poor sanitation and drainage, irregular electric supply, unplanned construction, increasing air pollution and poor urban governance which results in growing problems of law and order. […]As migrants continue to arrive, they often end up in illegal settlements on precarious lands with major environmental concerns. The slums are located throughout the city with few services offered at high prices through middlemen, also called musclemen or mastaans, using illegal methods. […] Access to basic services such as water, sanitation, electricity, health and education by the poor is limited. Because most slums are not recognized as legal lands, the Government, NGOs and Donors generally do not provide services in these areas. As a result, a parallel structure has emerged with mastaans providing services for a high fee. (Baker 2007a, pp. xiii, xv-xvi). 4For example, “China’s economic boom has been driven by policies that promote coastal devel- opment and which have encouraged one of the largest coastward migrations ever.” (McGranahan et al. 2007b). 5Ahsan puts the blame on corrupt officials, namely “hawlka officers, attestation officers, circle officers, objection officers, and appeal officers… and settlement officers.” (Ahsan 2011, p. 4). 62 J. Luetz In such precarious conditions it can be very difficult for newly arriving migrants to get themselves established. In Dhaka there is “only one public tap for every 500 slum dwellers” (UN Habitat 2003, cited in UNDP 2011, p. 48), and according to Belt (2011, p. 73), the percentage of urbanites with access to toilets has decreased from 59% in 1990 to 56% in 2010, with an overall coverage drop to 52% projected by 2030. Such mounting pressures can constrain migrants with no other options to source amenities outside of official government supply grids, often forcing them to pay even higher prices for basic service provision than wealthier urbanites. Baker (2007b) mentions “the poor pay 2 Taka for a bucket of water, whereas the wealthy can purchase 1000 litres through the official grid for 4.5 Taka” (cited in Luetz 2008a, Endnote 259, p. 116). A number of studies have drawn attention to the possible consequences of slum settlement proliferation, which could exacerbate existing vulnerabilities.