Climate change and migration impacts on cities: Lessons from Bangladesh

Abstract

A rapidly growing research field in relation to climate change, vulnerability and human migration has been recognised by the academics and practitioners. Thus, it is also important to understand the relationship between climate-induced migration and urban consequences. This paper aims to review the recent trends of climate change and urbanization research to explore the nexus between climate-induced human mobility and subsequent impact on cities in Bangladesh. Notably, the climate-induced migration literature somewhat stagnated in theorising the concepts of ‘migration as adaptation’ and investigating the causes, drivers, factors and dynamics of decision-making in relation to migration or displacements. Little attention has been paid to the urban consequences of overwhelming migration to the cities of developing countries, such as Bangladesh. Reviewing available empirical evidence, this paper claims that Bangladesh needs a systematic transformative territorial/spatial planning approach to identify the weaknesses and strengths of particular regions as well as cities to deal with impacts of climate-induced migration. It indicates that making resilient cities would be impossible without sufficient and simultaneous considerations of rural resilience. The paper also suggests that further research and access to migration data would be a prerequisite to solve the problems.

Keywords

• Climate change
• Migration
• Migrants
• Refugees
• Urban poor
• Urban consequences