ABSTRACT
Bangladesh is one of the most impoverished and densely populated areas of the world. Social inequality, environmental injustice, and famine are common. This chapter examines how climate change in Bangladesh is increasing people’s vulnerability to poverty and social deprivation. Intensifying storms are causing flooding and forcing rural people onto the bottom rungs of the urban social hierarchy. Populations of poor people in several areas of the country, people whose rights are not well protected, are likely to have the least physical and social capital to allow them to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. Climate change adds to existing challenges endured by the rural and urban poor, including political and economic marginalization and land and resource encroachments by more powerful social groups. For the large number of urban poor, including homeless people living on city streets, health problems are growing, especially in the absence or shortage of the necessary infrastructure and adequate employment and in light of sea level rise and flooding.
