Drivers of Climigration in Coastal Communities in Bangladesh

The study examines the migration behaviour of rural residents in coastal Bangladesh, one of the world’s most climate-stressed areas.

The primary reason people migrate from coastal Bangladesh to the cities is better employment opportunities or education. Environmental stressors and climate hazards are the second reason that affects economic and livelihood opportunities in rural coastal areas.

Environmental hazards also act as a “push” for around 6.5% of members of these communities to leave the area and a “pull” when they return to reunite with family members. According to the study, climate migration is a growing problem (Bernzen, Jenkins, & Braun, 2019).

With a population of nearly 60 million, one-third of the people living in Bangladesh’s coastal areas are considered poor. Coastal communities face sudden onsets of climate hazards like extreme flooding, storm surges, riverbank erosion, growing salinization, land subsidence, and sea-level rise (Bernsen et al., 2019).

The study finds that people who move to the cities are those who possess the following characteristics or “resources”: being male, younger, working outside of agriculture, and having higher human and horizontal social capital as the main reason. People with family members in the city are willing to help them with lodging or those with skills and education to survive in the urban areas.

Environmental stressors and climate hazards also play an important role in why people leave. Loss of arable land, families affected by rice paddies converted to shrimp farms, damages caused by cyclones, and the gradual salinization of agricultural land push people to move to urban areas.

Urban migration from rural areas has rapidly grown in the last three decades, creating urban slums.
Coastal residents who chose to remain face challenges from projected sea-level rise in the next 30 to 50 years and other environmental stressors that present severe obstacles to coastal resilience.

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