Environmental Law in the Anthropocene Delta: Legal and Institutional Responses to Ecological Change in Khulna, Bangladesh

The environmental crisis confronting Khulna cannot be understood through conventional categories of pollution control or climate vulnerability alone. Situated within the southwest Bengal Delta and adjacent to the Sundarbans, Khulna is experiencing interacting pressures arising from salinity intrusion, declining freshwater availability, aquaculture, industrialisation, urban expansion, biodiversity loss and climate-induced hazards. These pressures expose a structural weakness in environmental governance: ecological processes operate across river basins and administrative boundaries, whereas environmental regulation remains largely organised around sectors, projects and individual institutions. This article examines whether Bangladesh's environmental-law framework is capable of responding to this emerging condition, conceptualised here as the Anthropocene delta. Drawing on doctrinal and socio-legal analysis, the article examines the Constitution of Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Environment Conservation Act 1995, Environment Conservation Rules 2023, Environment Court Act 2010, Bangladesh Water Act 2013, Bangladesh Biodiversity Act 2017, climate and delta policies, relevant international environmental instruments and empirical literature on the southwest coastal region. It argues that Bangladesh's principal problem is no longer the absence of environmental legislation but the fragmented implementation of existing norms. The Khulna experience demonstrates the limitations of project-centred environmental impact assessment, insufficient coordination between environmental and water governance, weak integration of climate adaptation with ecological protection, and inadequate recognition of distributive and procedural environmental justice. The article proposes a transition towards integrated delta governance based on cumulative-impact assessment, strategic environmental assessment, ecosystem-based management, institutional coordination and meaningful community participation. Such a transition would allow environmental law to move from regulating individual activities towards governing cumulative ecological change across the delta.