Water insecurity, socio-environmental stress and everyday peace in urban Bangladesh

Urban drinking water insecurity is an increasing challenge in climate-vulnerable secondary cities across the Global South, where hydro-climatic variability intersects with weak infrastructure, uneven governance and socio-economic inequality. This article examines how water insecurity interacts with everyday social tension and local peace practices in Faridpur City, Bangladesh. Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews and two focus group discussions with 26 participants, the study explores residents’ lived experiences of water access, with particular attention to gendered labour, informal water arrangements and municipal service gaps. The findings show that hydro-climatic stress does not directly produce social conflict. Instead, seasonal shortages and groundwater depletion intensify existing governance failures and social inequalities, generating household strain, disputes at shared water points, mistrust around informal access and heightened burdens for women and low-income households. At the same time, residents use everyday peace practices, including informal water sharing, negotiated queuing, household scheduling and conflict avoidance, to manage scarcity and limit escalation. The article contributes to conflict-peace-climate scholarship by shifting attention from deterministic climate-conflict claims to the everyday frictions and cooperation produced by water insecurity in a secondary city.