Climate Change, Human Displacement and the Potentiality of Conflict: The Case of Bangladesh

Abstract

The impacts of climate change are damaging many aspects of human environment and increasing the vulnerabilities of millions of people in different parts of the world. Among different consequences of climate change, human displacement caused by natural disaster, both sudden and gradual, is one of the most obvious scenario in recent times. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world due to climate change. Different types of natural calamities such as floods, riverbank erosion, tropical cyclones and sea level rise have increased in terms of frequency and intensity in recent times. It has made life unsupportable in different disaster prone areas which resulted into the displacement of an increasing number of people from rural and coastal areas of the country. This scenario has also added enormous stresses on the limited capacity of the government and become a source of destabilization and conflict in different levels of the state and society. In this backdrop, the study aims to understand the process through which people get uprooted from their traditional habitat due to climate change. It also investigates the likelihood of conflict that such displacement can create in the society.