Paper short abstract:

What has been the impact of historical and contemporary state and business-based drivers of socio-ecological change on rural Bangladeshi livelihood practices and the forms of knowledge they embody?

Paper long abstract:

Since the 1960s, the landscapes and waterscapes of Southwest Bangladesh have been affected by four major state and business-directed drivers: the construction of coastal dykes aimed to protect farming land from coastal flooding, resulting in increased siltation, waterlogging, loss of arable land and local riverine navigation; loss of up-stream water from infrastructural changes to the Ganges-Padma river system resulting in reduction in freshwater flows, landward intrusion of saline water and loss of land-water productivity and biodiversity; changing land use from rice to brackish water shrimp culture that increased soil salinity, degraded local biodiversity and created greater landlessness and poverty; and more recently state policies on climate change adaptation and energy security.

This paper has three aims:

1. To describe the drivers of these changes, their material and discursive underpinnings, and their differential impacts on local communities and ecologies;

2. To examine the ways in which practitioners of selected livelihood strategies (fishers, farmers and resource extractors) have understood and responded to these changes;

3. To discuss the implications of these changes and responses for the theoretical utility and policy relevance of the concepts of 'traditional' and local knowledges and practices.

The presentation draws on primary research in two villages in Southwest Bangladesh complemented by secondary sources from other rural sites in the country.