Bangladesh, a country situated in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta (GBM), is one of the most vulnerable countries to climatic stressors and changes. Low lying coastal region in the southern part of the country is highly vulnerable due to its exposure to frequent and intense cyclones, and other hydro-meteorological coastal hazards, such as projected sea-level rise, storm surges, monsoonal flooding and waterlogging, and saline water intrusion. In addition, there have been significant infrastructure development and land use change across Bangladesh’s coastal regions since the 1960s that contributed to increase environmental risk and vulnerability of coastal communities. This dissertation examines the risks and vulnerabilities faced by the coastal communities, particularly small-scale fisheries and aquaculture-based communities, in Bangladesh and how the households and the government respond to manage these risks and vulnerabilities. Three specific objectives of this dissertation are: a) to explore the risk and vulnerability that coastal households face in Bangladesh in conjunction with main climatic hazards and changes; b) to understand households' temporary internal migration decision-making in the context of climatic stressors and socio-ecological changes; and c) to explore the extent to which social protection programs in the coastal districts of Bangladesh are responsive to environmental and climatic changes facing coastal dwellers, with a focus on whether such programs help households build adaptive capacity. This research is primarily based on a fieldwork in three coastal districts of Bangladesh in 2017. During the fieldwork, the researcher conducted a household survey of 720 households, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews. The three research objectives lead to three research papers. The first paper of this dissertation constructs household-level vulnerability and risk indices by applying the risk framework offered in the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). With the help of these indices, this paper shows the levels of risk of hazards vary among geographical units, income levels and occupational groups. The indices also show that although vulnerability is well-correlated with poverty, risks of hazards are high for upper-income households as well. Applying the New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) theory and the more recent environmental migration framework proposed by Black et al. (2011), the second paper shows that various types of environmental and climatic stressors impact households’ decisions on temporary migration differently, and alongside environmental and climatic factors, traditional socioeconomic drivers of migration also play significant roles in households’ temporary migration decisions. The third paper applies the adaptive social protection framework and finds poor targeting efficiency and the inability of the social protection system in scaling up when needed. However, the analysis does show poor households benefiting from social protection programs were less likely to use adverse coping strategies and were more likely to adopt productive livelihood strategies including production innovations and diversification. This dissertation contributes to the methods of measuring and understanding risk and vulnerability specific to stressors, locations, income levels and occupations. It also sheds light on the importance of temporary migration as a risk management strategy that received less attention in the literature than permanent migration. Finally, it identifies areas to improve existing social protection programs to make them responsive to emerging risks and vulnerabilities. While addressing three separate but related topics, the papers are consistent in their implication for adaptation planning for coastal communities.

Just and equitable responses to the disparate impacts of climate change on communities and individuals throughout the world are at the heart of the concept of climate justice. Commodification, in the context of my research, is the process of monetizing nature and livelihoods for the purpose of surplus accumulation and profit maximization. In this study, my aim was to contextualize the concepts of climate injustice, disaster capitalism, and the commodification of lives and livelihoods in the specific setting of disaster vulnerability in southwest coastal Bangladesh. By conducting a case study in Kamarkhola and Sutarkhali regions of southwest coastal Bangladesh, I utilized discourse analysis and content analysis of livelihood interviews, semi-structured interviews, and policy documents to demonstrate the conceptual interrelation among global climate change, climate injustice, disaster capitalism, and capitalist expansion in environmentally precarious areas. I argue that in Southwest Coastal Bangladesh, the vulnerability to disasters stems from a complex and multifaceted layer of social hierarchies and inequalities, entwined with factors such as class and power relations. I also argue that Inequalities in the political, economic, and social realms have a key role in imposing vulnerability on disadvantaged people living in ecologically vulnerable areas. The perpetuation of inequality is sustained by the expansion and accumulation of capital through the dispossession and exploitation of natural resources. The existing approaches to climate change adaptation in the southwest coastal region of Bangladesh are deeply entrenched in neoliberal capitalism. The introduction of neoliberal economic policies, such as the privatization of state lands and the promotion of export-oriented aquaculture, created favorable conditions for capitalist expansion in environmentally vulnerable places through "accumulation by dispossession."

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