Climate change, ecological modernization, and disaster management: the coastal embankment project in southwestern Bangladesh

Abstract

Climate change, one of the severest environmental threats to humankind, disproportionately affects low-income, developing countries in the Global South. Having no feasible mitigation alternatives, these countries resort to adaptation efforts to address climate perturbations. Climate change adaptation (or resilience) is primarily a localized course of action that depends on individuals, social networks, economies, ecologies, political structures, and the capabilities of all those to work collectively to absorb, learn from, and transform in the face of new realities. With a view to controlling the floods that shattered the life and economy of the then East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh, during the mid-twentieth century, the coastal embankment project (CEP) was instituted as an adaptation strategy to natural disasters in Southwestern Bangladesh. Based on a qualitative analysis of primary and secondary data, this paper seeks to critically evaluate the efficacy of the CEP in terms of the space for feasible action and ecological modernization. The findings of this research indicate that the CEP has become an unrealistic venture that hinders the growing economic activity of shrimp aquaculture in the area. This paper is expected to contribute to generating further theoretical and empirical discourse on the evaluation of similar development projects around the globe.