Climate mobility as adaptation: Rethinking vulnerability, human security and risk governance in the Bay of Bengal

Climate-induced migration has become one of the most paradigmatic characteristics of the Anthropocene, connecting it to themes of environmental change, livelihood security, and social justice, adaptation and vulnerability, human and state agency, and natural resource politics. The Bay of Bengal region constitutes an intriguing sample for studying migration due to the combination of low-lying coastal deltas, large concentrations of coastal populations, exposure to cyclones and storm surges, river bank erosion, sea level rise, and salt-water intrusion, together with its reliance on climate-sensitive agriculture and fisheries. The Sundarbans region, which extends around India-Bangladesh’s border, emerges as a hotspot in this regard. Climate-induced migration, therefore, intersects with poverty, land use rights, gender, access to services, and overall vulnerability with often different development outcomes in terms of migration, displacement, immobility, and planned relocation in Bangladesh and India. This paper at hand argues that climate-induced migration should not be considered as either a failed adaptation to environmental change or a humanitarian response but rather a response strategy, which, depending on the institutional context, can have mixed results in terms of adaptation. The paper proposes a Risk-Informed Mobility Governance Framework for the Bay of Bengal, covering the key domains of natural climate occurrence, vulnerability and exposure, social protection and livelihood, safe migration, urbanization, planned relocation, ecosystem-based adaptation, gender, and regional and international cooperation. Drawing upon the IPCC mobility-risk framework, migration as adaptation discourse, sustainable livelihoods approach, political ecology, capability approach, human security, and related theories and frameworks, the article aims to demonstrate through selected case studies from Bangladesh and India the key migration governance questions that emerge in the region. These include the recognition of the need for mobility as a key adaptive capacity, the role of local, institutional, and formal policies, the impact of migration on households, communities, and countries of origin and destination, and the overall transformational role of migration for climate change adaptation. The paper concluded by emphasizing the need for the Bay of Bengal region to transition from crisis response management to promoting anticipatory adaptation policies and rights-based and risk-informed social governance, focusing on sustainable livelihoods and regional integration.