Climate, (In)Security and Violence in Bangladesh: Climate Impacts and Conflict Risks in Coastal Hatiya.

What happens when climate change collides with everyday survival? My research takes us to Hatiya Island in Bangladesh, one of the country’s most climate-exposed places. Here, communities live with erosion, flooding, cyclones, and regular inundation. Yet these challenges do not create conflict on their own — they interact with long-standing problems of inequality, elite control, and weak governance. The result is insecurity that people mostly endure in silence, as political pressure and fear suppress collective action.

Within this broader picture, different groups experience these pressures differently. Fishers are trapped in cycles of debt and pushed further to the margins by fishing bans. Women face heightened domestic tensions as financial and climate stresses spill into the household.

The key insight is that climate stress by itself does not cause violence. It is inequality, exclusion, and failures of governance that shape whether insecurity turns into open conflict, hidden struggles, or quiet endurance.