Presentation short abstract

Communities in Bangladesh’s Sundarbans resist shrimp aquaculture and rising salinity through women-led mobilisation to restore freshwater and livelihoods. A multimodal photovoice project captures their struggles, solidarities, and climate justice claims.

Presentation long abstract

Bangladesh is widely recognised as a frontline of global climate change, where climatic vulnerabilities intersect with longstanding social inequalities. In the Sundarbans delta, located within the world’s largest river delta and mangrove forest, rural marginalisation, environmental degradation, and gendered burdens converge most sharply around the scarcity of safe drinking water. Although salinity intrusion is often attributed to sea-level rise, it has been exacerbated by the expansion of shrimp and crab aquaculture, which has been promoted since the 1980s as a climate adaptation strategy. While shrimp exports positioned Bangladesh among the world’s major producers, they also generated profound socio-ecological changes, reshaping gender roles, reconfiguring class relations, and destabilising rural livelihoods.

Women bear the heaviest consequences of salinity: walking long distances to collect freshwater and facing health risks, including skin infections, reproductive health complications, and racialised impacts that further influence social recognition. These everyday hardships have fuelled recurring waves of resistance. Since the 1990s, inhabitants have mobilised against shrimp aquaculture, demanding access to freshwater and a return to rice cultivation. Between November 2023 and July 2024, residents of three villages in Koikhali Union—led by small farming families and women—reclaim a government-abandoned rainwater-harvesting canal. Despite intimidation and political pressure, they dismantled saltwater infrastructure, restored the canal, and revived freshwater storage, enabling rice cultivation to resume.

This multimodal essay, created collaboratively by community members, photographer Rasel, and Hossain, draws on photovoice methods to combine images, text, and sound. It highlights how marginalised communities in the Sundarbans confront climate injustices through everyday struggles and solidarity.