Uncertain Waters: Deltaic Interventions in Bangladesh amid Precarious Conditions

Abstract

Southwestern Bangladesh is a delta crosscut by a system of raised earthen embankments designed to keep multiple rivers from flooding the agricultural lands where most of the country's population lives. Known as “polders,” the embankments were built beginning in the 1960s with the stated intent of preventing catastrophic flooding. Since then, they have required almost continual reinvestment, as seasonal storms, monsoon rainfall, and development activities erode polder walls every year, causing rivers to blast through containment zones and flood low-lying villages. Water is a perennial concern. More recently, as climate change comes to dominate the way international development agencies and global policy makers frame Bangladesh's environmental problems, longer histories of human interventions into precarious deltaic landscapes are overshadowed by a single version of hazard. By drawing on ethnographic research and archival sources, this essay aims to unpack what sustainability means in a context of uncertain weather, unstable landscapes, and dynamic human social and environmental interactions, ultimately urging for increased attention to a history of human fashioning of deltaic lands.