M. Anwar Hossen

• Doctor of Philosophy
• University of Dhaka

Climate change impacts create survival challenges for people in coastal areas of Bangladesh. Government responses are exercised through top-down adaptation governance, reflecting a neocolonial perspective evident in externally funded water development projects such as the Flood Control, Drainage and Irrigation (FCDI) scheme. Problematically, this f...

Climate change has become a major global concern, and it has severe consequences for all communities. Coastal areas of Bangladesh are vulnerable to climate change because of their geophysical condition and geographical position. Although climate change affects people’s sustainable livelihood strategies in coastal regions of Bangladesh, it has gaine...

Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) as the major representative of local communities can perform significant role in the Ganges Brahmaputra (GB) basin governance. The major ground for this representation is to protect their livelihood and reduce the gap and promoteing the trust and cooperation between local people and governments in the GB basin cou...

Climate change impacts create survival challenges for local people in the coastal areas of Bangladesh. Government responses are typically exercised through top-down adaptation governance structures reflecting a neo-colonial perspective, evident in externally funded water development projects such as the Flood Control, Drainage and Irrigation (FCDI)...

Environmental Sociology is one of the major branches of Sociology to explore the relationship between natural resources, development policy, and community livelihood in Bangladesh. More specifically, water development perspective performs a major role in natural resource management and its significance on sustainable development in terms of environ...

Founded in 1957 by a UNESCO mission, the Department of Sociology at the University of Dhaka has since pioneered the study of Sociology in Bangladesh, ultimately setting the development discourses for the country by creating critical debates on relevant issues. This book highlights the overall contribution of the Department in nation-building, and t...

Climate change has garnered widespread societal concern due to its yawning consequences on both the natural environment and human society. Consequently, the imperative for adaptation to climate change has become intensely entrenched in the collective psyche of humanity. Traditionally, women have played an indispensable role in climate adaptation pr...

Women are recognized as proactive catalysts for societal change in rural Bangladesh because of their significant socio-economic contributions to agricultural practices. Historically, they have been closely associated with various agricultural activities ranging from seed preservation to crop harvesting. Despite their vital role in the rural economy...

Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) as the major representative of local communities can perform significant role in the Ganges Brahmaputra (GB) basin governance. The major ground for this representation is to protect their livelihood and reduce the gap and promoting the trust and cooperation between local people and governments in the GB basin coun...

Climate change adaptation is currently an important community concern in developing countries like Bangladesh. The conceptualization of adaptation within the government system matters for the promotion of activities such as employment generation for local communities. The lesser the gap between government policy and the local community’s needs for...

Population displacement is closely connected with environmental violence in the coastal area of Bangladesh. Livelihood of local people depends on riverine culture, freshwater resources, and agroecological system. However the racially profiled development perspective, capitalism, under the grand narratives of modernity influences the eco-social rela...

Sociology is one of the major disciplines to foster understanding and protection of the livelihoods of local people. For instance, the discipline can describe the linkage between the environment and people and the effects of environmental change on local groups of people in a Delta country such as Bangladesh. However, the imperial philosophy of mod...

Sustainability of climate change adaptation is currently the core point in climate-vulnerable countries like Bangladesh. The policies in adaptation interventions like water resources management and associated disaster risk reduction promoted by the government (Go) in Bangladesh are supposed to overcome the climate change effects and ensure local co...

Climate change adaptation is currently an important community concern in the developing countries like Bangladesh. The conceptualization of adaptation in the government system matters to develop its canon in promoting activities such as employment generation important for local communities. The lesser the gap between government policy and the local...

This paper demonstrates how a major Non-Government Organization (NGO) in Bangladesh develops poverty reduction programs and their effects on local poor people. These programs will be addressed as part of a larger context, particularly as it relates to any projections into the future of the country. One of the features of Bangladeshi society is the...

Globalization is one of the latest dominating issues of the everyday ways of life. The lives of ordinary people everywhere in the world seem increasingly to be shaped by the roles of local-global power dynamics. The global development agenda on the notion of empowering the local people incorporates this coordination of power dynamics, which indicat...

Israel is one of the complex ethnically divided countries of the world. The root causes of entitlement and entitlement failure are influenced by the different ethnic identities. One of the basic forms of discriminatory practices experienced by different ethnic groups is reflected through labor market participation. This paper will explore the relat...

The government of Bangladesh has attempted to mitigate the negative effects of the Farakka Barrage by implementing projects intended to distribute the available water in more efficient ways. As documented in chapter two, imme- diately after the construction of this barrage in India, the flow of water during the dry season lessened by 70 percent in...

Bangladesh is a delta country dominated by an agrarian society. Two of the largest rivers in Asia, the Ganges and Brahmaputra, meet in Bangladesh before emptying into the Bay of Bengal. The Ganges River and its major distributaries dominate the southwest region of the country, where this study has done. Rural communities in this region produce agri...

In this chapter, I describe the basin hydrological and ecological characteristics of the Ganges Dependent Area (GDA) in which Chapra is located, noting how government interventions such as the Farakka Barrage and the Flood Action Plan have undermined the ability of the GDA to provide essential ecosystem services to the majority of its residents. Tr...

In Chapra, access to a sufficient and predictable supply of water is the prereq- uisite for realizing other human rights to food, employment, health care, educa- tion and housing. The ability to realize these human rights is undermined by the effects of Farakka diversion constructed by India and the highly centralized, neoliberal approach to water...

As a result of government policies and interventions the agricultural system at Chapra is being transformed from an ecocentric to a technocentric system. I have indicated the nature of some of these changes in chapters two and three but, in this chapter, I describe them in greater detail. They include a wholesale shift to new crops, new cropping sc...

Local-level government in rural Bangladesh administers a number of agricul- tural subsidy and safety-net programs established by the national government on the basis of guidelines provided by the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper and the Millennium Development Goals. In theory, these programs could alleviate some of the worst hardships caused by the...

In the previous chapters in this book, I document current water management practices in Bangladesh and analyze those practices in relationship to the agricultural system, livelihood challenges and human rights. My fieldwork evidence finds out that improved water management at the Ganges Basin, state and local level, to ensure proper seasonal flow i...

Rural women in Bangladesh are the major victims of poverty and resource scarcity including inequality, exclusion, and deprivation. This context of poverty can be described as structural in nature that originates from exclusion and deprivation in accessing socio-economic, financial and political institutions (Kabeer 2002). Structural cause of women’...

This paper explores the linkage between the Brahmaputra Basin ecological integrity and community livelihoods in northeastern part of Bangladesh. To protect this linkage, it is important to develop proper water management based on inclusion of all of the basin countries. However, the unilateral water development projects like National River Linkage...

Human rights are fundamental rights for citizens in a country like Bangladesh to be protected their life and livelihoods. Irrespective of their background, the development policies and programs are supposed to protect this right. However, due to the growing influence of the structural interventions on the development policies and programs, this hum...

Climate change effects cause major socioeconomic challenges for marginalized groups, particularly women, in Bangladesh. Specifically, drought increases resource scarcity, causing social problems that impact women, which can be described as the gendered sociocultural construction of vulnerabilities. Given this constructed dimension of gender-based v...

The Ganges Basin communities in Bangladesh are entirely dependent on the Ganges River flow for their agricultural production; river flows determine whether most people will have access to employment, food, education, housing, and health care. For the vast majority of people in this region, this production includes the ability to match cropping stra...

Natural resources for agricultural production are increasingly in the policy framework of western intellectual imperialism based on civilizing gaze. The conceptualization of sustainable development on agriculture is a very recent phenomenon on this colonial perspective that describes the transformation of agricultural practices from ecological to t...

This paper explores the ecological effects of the top-down Ganges Basin water management systems in Chapra, Bangladesh, based on my ethnographic fieldwork a data collected in 2011-12. An example of this top-down system is the Farakka Barrage in India that causes major ecological system failures and challenges to community livelihoods. The reduction...

Coastal people, especially those living within deltaic areas, encounter major climatic concerns which affect their livelihoods. To cope with this problem, different types of planned adaptation strategies have been implemented guided by laws, policies and programs. However, these guiding documents sometimes fall short of addressing the needs of clim...

Natural resource management and environmental protection are well addressed in policies, though translation of these into legal frameworks is less strong; stronger coherence is needed among sectoral policies to maximise their benefits.  General human rights are well-protected; however, the rights and special needs of IDPs need to be adequately rec...

Dr. Hossen carried out an exceptional program of research in Bangladesh which focused on water governance in relation to human rights, international water law and environmental sustainability. His major argument is that eco-agricultural system encounters major disruptions due to a number of factors including regional hydropolitics and neoliberal an...

River bank and coastal people in Bangladesh encounter major effects of climate change on their everyday livelihoods.To cope with climatic concerns, they use migration at local and international levels as a major adaptation strategy. This paper seeks to explore challenges of governance principles that encompass legal norms and policies in terms of s...

In this paper we focus on the principle of community inclusion in water and ecological resource governance and document the negative impacts of its absence, in Chapra village, Bangladesh, on sustainable development and livelihood security. This community depends heavily on common property resources such as wild plant foods, fish and ‘natural’ crop...

This paper attempts to show how participatory mapping practices can contribute to local water resource management for community empowerment. The river bank communities such as Chapra encounter exclusion because of geographic aspects of local water development projects. To understand this exclusion, this paper focuses on the research question; why d...

This paper explores potentials of village organization for promoting sustainable water development in rural Bangladesh. In this country, more than seventy percent of people live in 87,319 villages and work as the catalysts for national development. These villages have their traditional organizational system for local water resource management that...

This paper explores the ecological effects of the top-down Ganges Basin water management systems in Chapra, Bangladesh, based on my ethnographic fieldworka data collected in 2011-12. An example of this top-down system is the Farakka Barrage in India that causes major ecological system failures and challenges to community livelihoods. The reduction...

Development is supposed to provide a positive change for the different groups of marginalized people. This change had begun with modernization approach in water development for agricultural production in Bangladesh. However, politics of water resources development exclude locally contextualized understanding of water, community, and sustainability,...

Natural disasters disorder the existing everyday normative practices. The magnitude of any disaster creates risk and vulnerability in different ways that apply to different groups. The consequences of material and non-material risk and vulnerability downgrade the existing social structure and social order of the society, which reflects in the proce...

Natural disasters disorder the existing everyday normative practices. The magnitude of any disaster creates risk and vulnerability in different ways that apply to different groups. The consequences of material and non-material risk and vulnerability downgrade the existing social structure and social order of the society, which reflects in the proce...