BIDS study finds it caused over 27% families to completely relocate
Slow-onset shocks like river erosion are now a major driver of full household migration in coastal areas, with 27.41 percent of complete relocations linked to erosion, according to new research by the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS).
Erosion and drought are now influencing mobility in ways sudden disasters often do not, said Azreen Karim, senior research fellow of BIDS, while presenting the study titled "How do farm and non-farm occupational experiences influence responses to climate events?" at the Annual BIDS Conference on Development 2025.
The research drew on 403 coastal households and seven focus group discussions under a broader project on climate-induced migration and gender.
It identified three types of movement: full migration, when entire households relocate; partial migration, when some members move; and mixed migration, where both patterns occur.
While floods and cyclones commonly trigger temporary or partial movement, river erosion alone accounted for 74 full migrations and 77 partial migrations.
Floods, by contrast, accounted for 40.8 percent of partial migrations.
The study showed some families chose to remain at destination sites due to NGO support or loss of housing at origin, while others preferred to return because of high living costs or the need to stay close to extended family.
Another study presented at the conference examined why the haor region remains among the country's most climate-vulnerable areas.
In his paper titled "Living with floods: Livelihood vulnerability and adaptation in wetlands of Bangladesh", BIDS Research Director Mohammad Yunus said households continue to face repeated climatic and economic shocks despite higher income and increased asset ownership.
The researchers constructed a vulnerability index from 32 haors across seven districts based on exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity.
Households inside the haor recorded higher exposure and sensitivity and lower adaptive capacity than households in adjacent areas, Yunus said.
While the overall gap was not large, it reflected how structural exposure to flash floods and monsoon flooding continues to undermine resilience.
The per-capita income, fertiliser use, crop-market participation and income from open-water fisheries helped strengthen adaptive capacity though not enough to offset physical risks. Market distance was found to have no significant effect, he added.
Presenting "Adoption gaps and implications for scaling climate-resilient rice: Panel evidence from climate-prone areas of Bangladesh," Research Fellow Taznoore Samina Khanam said stress-tolerant rice varieties are expanding in some regions but remain limited in others.
She showed that rice still accounts for 48 percent of rural employment and 58 percent of daily calorie intake, yet farmers lose about 9 percent of annual production to climate impacts.
Around 41 percent of agricultural land is water-stressed and coastal salinity has risen 26–33 percent over 35 years.
Drawing on panel data from 1,485 households across 16 districts, she said farmers rarely plant stress-tolerant varieties alone and typically combine them with modern varieties.
Submergence-tolerant varieties are rising fastest in Khulna and Rajshahi, while salinity-tolerant varieties lag. High seed prices, poor availability and weak marketability remain major barriers.
Prior exposure to submergence increased the likelihood of adoption, while experience with drought or salinity reduced it, Samina added.
In his study "Clean cooking fuel adoption in Bangladesh: The success story of LPG," Research Fellow Muntasir Murshed said 72 percent of the population still lacks access to clean cooking fuel. Bangladesh ranks the lowest in South Asia and 37th among 48 lower-middle-income countries.
LPG use has expanded more than 25-fold since 2009–10 following the halt in new household gas connections and increased private investment.
