Asaduzzaman Shamrat

Rivers in Bangladesh have long shaped its landscape, but as these rivers shift course, they carry away more than just soil and trees—they also take with them homes, memories, and the fragile livelihoods of entire communities.

Over recent decades, this gradual loss combined with the increasing violence of storms and floods has forced millions from riverbanks and low-lying coastal areas into cities. This movement is not a distant issue; it is actively transforming urban centers like Dhaka, Chittagong, and Khulna into places where the impacts of climate loss and human hardship intersect. Humanitarian monitoring shows that natural disasters cause hundreds of thousands of internal displacements in Bangladesh each year—about 700,000 annually in recent years—ranking the country among the top five worldwide for disaster-driven displacement since 2019.
These figures conceal a deeper crisis. From 2014 to 2023, disasters triggered roughly 14.7 million internal displacements—many temporary but all eroding security and assets, often making return to villages impossible. Cities, magnets for opportunity, absorb most migrants but lack the housing, sanitation, health services, and formal jobs needed to lift newcomers out of poverty. Instead, many become trapped in urban precarity.

Looking forward, the challenge may intensify. World Bank models predict millions more internal climate migrants in Bangladesh by mid-century—estimates reach nearly 20 million by 2050 under some scenarios. These projections underscore the urgent need for planning and investment.

On the ground, families displaced from chars (river islands) and eroded banks arrive with minimal possessions, finding cheap land or occupying public spaces like canals and railway embankments. In Dhaka, they swell informal settlements—slums with fragile corrugated roofs nestled among the city’s skyscrapers. UNICEF and housing reports estimate several million live in Dhaka’s slums, often in single-room homes sharing water and toilets. Most work informal, low-paying jobs without social protection, facing vulnerability to illness, eviction, and further displacement.

This pattern repeats across cities: migrants trade floods for heat, polluted air, and uncertain lives in informal settlements. Estimates note roughly two thousand new arrivals daily in Dhaka, driven by disasters and slow-onset changes like salinity and erosion. This inflow overwhelms services, raises housing costs, and increases households without proper water and sanitation.
Riverbank erosion, visible in satellite images, is a daily reality, swallowing thousands of hectares of farmland and villages each year during monsoons, adding to migration pressure. This represents not only lost homes but the loss of rural capital—fields, ponds, and livelihoods.

Urban marginal living offers little choice. Newcomers live in small, flimsy shelters, queue for water, use overflowing communal latrines, and endure intermittent electricity. Jobs are unstable, wages low, and city costs high, leaving families vulnerable to shocks like illness or theft. Women and girls face particular risks from informal work and insecure housing, while children suffer interrupted schooling and disease. Studies link slum conditions to malnutrition, respiratory and waterborne diseases, and chronic stress.

Displacement and urban crowding are not only humanitarian but also urban-planning challenges. Cities like Dhaka face multi-million-unit housing deficits and insufficient infrastructure like hospitals, schools, drainage, and roads. Slums often emerge where services are weakest—in flood-prone, neglected areas—making residents first to suffer urban floods.

Policy responses should embrace that climate-driven migration is inevitable. Programs must shift from eviction to integrating low-income newcomers into formal housing and labor markets, expanding slum upgrading, secure tenure, sanitation, child-friendly spaces, and health services, making these communities safe and permanent. Local governments need financing and legal tools to regularize or relocate settlements with dignity, using mixed approaches like site-and-service schemes and rental subsidies.

Decentralizing opportunity by investing in secondary cities and small towns—improving education, power, industry, agro-processing, and transport—can reduce mega-city pressure and keep people linked to home regions. Strengthening resilient rural livelihoods with climate-tolerant crops, diversified aquaculture, social protection, and insurance will reduce migration push factors.
International climate finance must scale up and focus on people, supporting permanent housing, resilient infrastructure, and rights-based resettlement, ensuring secure land, compensation, livelihood support, and integrated services for migrants and hosts.

Urban governance reforms must normalize mobility, integrating affordable housing, pro-poor transport, flood-resistant infrastructure, heat mitigation, and inclusive labor policies. Real-time displacement and informal settlement tracking through satellites and community data can guide support and reduce shocks.

Finally, migrants’ dignity requires legal and social safety nets: cash transfers, child protection, healthcare, and schooling access. Eviction without compensation and destruction of community facilities cause trauma and instability.

Though the challenge is vast, progress is possible. With secure homes, steady jobs, and resilient livelihoods, families escape precarity and cities become sustainable. Bangladesh has long innovated—floating schools, cyclone shelters, early-warning systems—and these must now blend with large-scale planning, finance, and rights protections.

The alternative is a future where cities hold displaced populations in endless crisis, while coordinated action can help rebuild lives and communities.

The writer is a Senior Journalist and climate activist