Threatening Dystopias: The Global Politics of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh (Cornell Series on Land: New Perspectives on Territory, Development, and Environment)

Bangladesh is currently ranked as one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world. This book investigates the politics of climate change adaptation throughout the South Asian nation. The book engages with developers, policy makers, scientists, farmers, and rural migrants to show how Bangladeshi and global elites ignore the history of landscape transformation and its attendant political conflicts. The book looks at how groups craft economic narratives and strategies that redistribute power and resources away from peasant communities. Although these groups claim that increased production of export commodities will reframe the threat of climate change into an opportunity for economic development and growth, the reality is not so simple. For the country's rural poor, these promises ring hollow. As development dispossesses the poor from agrarian livelihoods, outmigration from peasant communities leads to precarious existences in urban centers. And a vision of development in which urbanization and export-led growth are both desirable and inevitable is not one the land and its people can sustain. The book shows how a powerful rural movement, although hampered by an all-consuming climate emergency, is seeking climate justice in Bangladesh. Threatening Dystopias shows how in Bangladesh--described by many as the world's most vulnerable country to climate change--national and global elites ignore the history of landscape transformation and intense, contemporary political conflicts. At the same time, these elites also craft narratives and economic strategies that redistribute power and resources away from peasant communities in the name of climate adaptation.These strategies outline a vision of development in which urbanization and export-led growth are both desirable and inevitable--a far cry from climate justice. For the country's rural poor, contends Kasia Paprocki, development entails dispossession from agrarian livelihoods and outmigration from rural communities to urban centers. Increased production of export commodities reframes the threat of climate change and its associated migrations as an opportunity for economic development and growth. As Paprocki shows, a powerful peasant movement is resisting these trends, but its struggle is hampered by oversimplified discourses of climate emergency.Threatening Dystopias draws on ethnographic and archival fieldwork with development practitioners, policy makers, scientists, farmers and rural migrants, to investigate the politics of climate change adaptation in Bangladesh. Paprocki offers an in-depth analysis of the global politics of climate change adaptation and how it is forged and manifested in this unique site

Bangladesh is currently ranked as one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world. In Threatening Dystopias, Kasia Paprocki investigates the politics of climate change adaptation throughout the South Asian nation. Drawing on ethnographic and archival fieldwork, she engages with developers, policy makers, scientists, farmers, and rural migrants to show how Bangladeshi and global elites ignore the history of landscape transformation and its attendant political conflicts.

Paprocki looks at how groups craft economic narratives and strategies that redistribute power and resources away from peasant communities. Although these groups claim that increased production of export commodities will reframe the threat of climate change into an opportunity for economic development and growth, the reality is not so simple. For the country's rural poor, these promises ring hollow.

As development dispossesses the poor from agrarian livelihoods, outmigration from peasant communities leads to precarious existences in urban centers. And a vision of development in which urbanization and export-led growth are both desirable and inevitable is not one the land and its people can sustain. Threatening Dystopias shows how a powerful rural movement, although hampered by an all-consuming climate emergency, is seeking climate justice in Bangladesh.

"Sluttish, careless, rotting abundance": prehistories of a climate dystopia -- Threatening dystopias: development and adaptation regimes -- Opportunity/crisis: knowledge production and the politics of uncertainty -- The social life of climate science: circulations of knowledge and uncertainty in development practice -- Autopsy of a village: agrarian change after the shrimp boom -- "We have come this far, we cannot retreat": adaptation, resistance, and competing visions of transformed futures -- Conclusion: climate justice and the politics of possibility "The political ecology of climate change adaptation is shaped by longer histories of development and agrarian change. In coastal Bangladesh, competing visions of this history and of desirable development trajectories under climate change among practitioners, scientists, and local residents shape different possibilities for the future"-- Provided by publisher