Impact of government-led relocation program on climate migrants’ resilience: a study in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

Rural livelihoods play a crucial role in South Africa’s socio-economic development but face significant challenges, such as poor infrastructure, environmental risks and economic marginalisation. Policies like the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme aim to address these issues, but gaps in policy formulation, weak implementation, and inadequate participation by the affected community often limit their impact. Effective governance that aligns national priorities with local needs is essential for achieving sustainable rural livelihoods. This study examined the relationship between policy implementation, governance, and rural engagement in the face of pandemics and disasters. Data were collected during eleven interviews and two focus group discussions in the Alfred Nzo District Municipality in South Africa. The findings highlight the importance of micro-level, place-based development, integrating community-driven initiatives with broader policy frameworks. The study established that robust localised planning, inclusive governance, and participatory decision-making build the resilience of rural communities and ensure that the development strategies implemented in these communities align with their reality. The study also emphasises the need for institutional mechanisms that strengthen the capacity and agency of local government actors to lead development initiatives. Given the growing challenges posed by climate change, disasters and pandemics, this paper made actionable recommendations to improve governance, expand the participation of rural communities in policymaking, and integrate disaster management strategies into local economic development. The use of the sustainable livelihoods framework in this research makes its findings relevant to the current discourse on how to shape policy and strategy to achieve equitable, community-centred, and adaptive rural governance in South Africa. Keywords: Sustainable Livelihoods, Rural Governance, Community Resilience, Disaster Preparedness, Policy Implementation

Household resilience and adaptation strategies for enhancing access to energy, water, and food during droughts and floods: A qualitative study.

This research demonstrates how small, inexpensive programs can contribute to sustainable development while also building household and community resilience. The relationship between the engagement of primary school aged children in urban agriculture through School Kitchen Garden (SKG) programs and household food sourcing habits was explored. The research highlighted the ability of SKG activities undertaken by children to inform changes towards more sustainable food sourcing habits. This paper draws on a thesis written as part of the requirements of a master’s degree in Environmental Management. The methods included the use of surveys and interviews of parents and caregivers of children participating in SKG programs at two Australian primary schools. The research findings indicated changes to food sourcing habits, diets and attitudes towards food that contribute to increased household and community food resilience and food sovereignty, as well as increased concern for social-ecological challenges. This study highlights how small investments can have positive multiple-layered social impacts that contribute to sustainable development innovations and transitions to more sustainable lifestyles. Increased understanding of such programs allow researchers and policymakers to better design and implement programs that increase awareness of the importance of food, water and energy and also contribute to sustainable development and household resilience.

Seawater intrusion in heterogeneous coastal aquifers under flooding events

Problem statement: Mentoring practices have been an important part of the practicum in initial teacher training. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a mentoring program for teacher mentors and mentees. It also explored the factors that influenced the impact of the mentoring program. This study was conducted in two secondary schools in the state of Sabah, Malaysia. Approach: Nine mentees and twelve teacher mentors participated in the study. A qualitative, case study was utilized to investigate the impact of the mentoring program and the factors that influenced the impact. Combined data sources from semi-structured interviews, focus group discussion and document review were used to gather data the in mentoring experiences in the study. Results: The results indicated that the impact of the program was varied but generally positive for both mentees and mentors, professionally and personally. Factors that impacted the mentoring program identified were classroom practices support, peer mentoring, mentoring relationships and interpersonal communications, personal qualities and attitudes, reflective practices and teaching observations. Major constraints identified were availability of mentors, particularly and mentees, time and timing and negative personal qualities and communication skills of both mentors and mentees. Cultural factors also seem to have influenced of the mentoring process. Conclusion: The study overall provides insights and guidelines for modifications to the revised mentoring program and recommendations for SESD, UMS, schools, higher education institutions and education policy makers and for further research.

Evidence around dam building worldwide has revealed that the impacts of dam projects can make the livelihoods of the project‐affected people worse off several years after the dam is commissioned. Despite six decades of Ghana's dam building experience, there is paucity of information on the impact of new programs implemented during post‐dam construction on local livelihoods. This study filled in the gap by examining whether the new livelihood enhancement programs introduced by the Bui Power Authority (BPA) at the Bui dam have revitalized local livelihood activities that had been disrupted by the dam construction and resettlement processes. Explorative qualitative data were collected through key informant interviews (KIIs), focus group discussions (FGDs), and field observation in the seven resettled communities at Bui and Jama Resettlement Townships and in three non‐resettled communities at the Bui dam area, including the host community. Purposive sampling was used to select a total of 130 participants for the KIIs and FGDs. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis approach. Results showed that, in general, the new livelihood support programs in the resettled communities such as cage aquaculture production, weaving, and pottery have positively impacted the socioeconomic livelihood activities of the resettlers in recent years compared to the period soon after resettlement. However, low crop yields due to poor soil fertility and small size of farmlands, lack of appropriate equipment to fish on the open water, and land compensation delays were reported to be undermining the livelihood revitalization efforts of the BPA. For effective revitalization of socioeconomic livelihood activities, the new programs should be more inclusive to cover the elderly, the host community, and possibly the neighboring communities instead of its current tilt toward the youth and the resettled communities. The findings showed the persistent impacts of dams on local population and highlighted how livelihood programs could revitalize local socioeconomic livelihood activities. The study contributed to addressing the conceptual question on whether it is possible for livelihood activities of project‐affected people to be reconstructed several years after disruption.

Coastal floods induced by a coastal barrier breaching under extreme storm surges represent a significant humanitarian, socioeconomic and ecological hazard. Moreover, it is a multiscale problem governed by complex interactions between a variety of hydrodynamic and sediment-related processes at different spatiotemporal scales. With global warming and expected climate change, many coastal systems may experience accelerated coastal erosion, coastal barrier breaching, coastal flooding and subsequent seawater intrusion into fresh groundwater. However, the current models of breaching-induced coastal floods and subsequent saltwater intrusion are mainly based on modelling each of these processes separately, which often leads to unreliable simulations because the mutual interactions among these naturally successive processes are ignored. Therefore, to consider such interactions, this study aims at exploring the possibility to simulate breaching, flooding and saltwater intrusion in a single model system in order to reliably draw the implications of coastal floods for groundwater contamination. For this purpose, this study aims first at selecting a suitable breaching model that can properly calculate inland discharges through breaching induced inlets. Second, the study attempts to couple the selected breaching model with suitable inundation and saltwater intrusion models in order to simulate successively the breaching-induced inundation and the subsequent saltwater intrusion.

Livelihood, WASH related hardships and needs assessment of climate migrants: evidence from urban slums in Bangladesh

Delineating the coastal vulnerability using Coastal Hazard Wheel: A study of West Bengal coast, India

Purpose: The objective of the study was to establish the level of utilization of obstetric care services; to establish factors promoting utilization of obstetric care services, and to identify factors hindering utilization of essential obstetric care services among Bajun women in the Faza Division.Methodology: The study was cross-sectional. Purposive and systematic sampling was used in getting participants. The research instruments to be used were self-administered semi-structured questionnaires and Focused Group Discussions (FGDs). Chi-square values were used to test the significance of the association between the dependent and independent variables. Qualitative data from FGDs were transcribed and analyzed by the thematic content analysis technique.Results: More than half of the respondents (95.6% (175)) indicated that obstetric services are important essential services while 4.4% (8) of them indicated that obstetric services are not important essential services. More than half of the respondents, (74.4% (131)) indicated that they have ever been provided with these services while 25.6% (45) of them indicated that they have never been provided with these services. The findings also indicate that there was an insignificant association (x2 = 2.135a, p = 0.711) between age of the respondents, the level of education (x2 = 0.258, p = 0.612) and (X2 = 1.144a, P = 0.887) between religion of the respondents and the utilization of essential obstetric care services. There is thus, a high probability of utilization of essential obstetric care services (1.049, 2.045, 1.219 and 1.051 times respectively) for those women who have received the information about obstetric services from mass media, the health care, parents and their teachers respectively compared to those who received information from their peers. For the women who were pregnant, the findings indicate a low probability of the utilization of essential obstetric care services for the women who sought pregnancy help from their doctors and nurses/wives (0.357 and 0.102 times respectively). There is also a high probability of utilization of essential obstetric care services for those women who have ever been pregnant, those who have ever had complications during pregnancy, labour & delivery, those who seek help during their pregnancy complications and those who seek help from the hospital during their pregnancy complications.Unique contributions to theory, policy and practice: Therefore, the study recommends the intensification of knowledge to the women in Faza Division, Lamu County about the importance of utilization of essential obstetric services. This will help to reduce the cases of complications affecting mothers during pregnancy, labour and delivery and thus reduce the infant as well as the maternal mortality rate in the County.

Poor rural water quality is a health challenge in Fiji. A mixed-methods study in six iTaukei (Indigenous Fijian) villages was conducted to understand local perceptions of drinking water access and quality, how this changes drinking water source choices, and impacts of age and gender. Seventy-two household surveys, 30 key informant interviews (KIIs) and 12 focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted. Household surveys revealed 41.7% of community members perceived their water as dirty and 76.4% perceived their water as clean. Two-thirds of households reported that they always or usually had enough water. FGDs and KIIs revealed water access and quality was influenced by population size, seasonality, and rainfall. Perceptions of water quality caused villages to shift to alternative water sources. Alignment of the qualitative and quantitative data identified four themes: sources and infrastructure, access, quality and contamination. There was mixed alignment of perceptions between access and quality between the household surveys, and KIIs and FGDs with partial agreement sources and infrastructure, and quality. Gender was found to influence perceptions of dirty water, contamination, and supply and demand. Perceptions of water quality and access shape decisions and choices for water sources and can be used to inform resilience and inclusive water strategies.

Increasing vulnerability to extreme environmental events (EEEs), exacerbated by climate change, is making adaptation inevitable for rural communities in Small Islands Developing states (SIDs), including the Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs). Particularly the communities’ located along the coastal areas that are experiencing sea level rise and coastal erosions, storm surges and flooding. Governments and development agencies across the Pacific have begun to implement adaptation policies to climate change at the community level to build resilience. This paper reports what limits and barriers rural household face for long-term adaptation, using community relocation from Mataniko Riverside to April Ridge, East Honiara, Solomon Islands, as a case study. Two hundred forty six (246) families were affected by the flash flood of Mataniko Riverside in April 2014. The Solomon Island government offered flood victims plots of land in an area safe from flooding. As of July 2015, the date of the study, the relocation process had been stalled, with flood victims still waiting for the promised plots of land. Questionnaires, oral interviews and focus group discussions with flood victims identified vulnerability, flood prone area and changing weather patterns as major limits, and government failures and the socioeconomic reality of these households as major barriers to adaptation. The study determined government failures to include a complicated land tenure system, absence of infrastructure development at the new site, inconsistent commitment to ensure completion of the land transfer to the settlers, and the lack of access to credit. Socioeconomic attributes including insufficient income, lack of formal education and skills, and consequential limited livelihood alternatives, also act as crucial barriers. The research findings indicate the need to design a relocation policy that addresses the limits and barriers identified here, specifically the land tenure system, and the financial support available to facilitate the relocation process.

Despite extensive legal reforms to democratise water governance, smallholder farmers in South Africa face challenges in accessing productive water. This paper describes water access conflicts among smallholder farmers in fourteen (14) historical rural towns in the Western Cape. The study examined how historical injustices, socio-economic disparities, environmental concerns, and colonial legacies have influenced current water governance and access mechanisms. Using a qualitative-exploratory framework, smallholder farmers were interviewed one-on-one (n = 119) and through focus group discussions (n = 51) to explore their understanding of water governance and agricultural water access conflicts. The findings from participant narratives were analysed thematically using Atlas.ti. The study found that historical inequities, inadequate infrastructure, differing social identities, and exclusion from decision-making perpetuate water access disparities among smallholder farmers, leading to resource conflicts. Climate change has impacted farmers, who have limited adaptive capacity due to land ownership constraints and water access barriers. Participants highlighted how these systemic issues converge to undermine investment in water-saving technologies, sustain cycles of vulnerability, and create the potential for in-group and out-group conflicts. A nuanced understanding of how social identity, particularly ‘intra-ethnicity’, and land ownership influence water access is needed. We recommend equitable water allocation mechanisms, community-based participatory governance, and investments in infrastructure to mitigate conflicts and promote sustainable water management.

Bangladesh faces a severe rural to urban migration challenge, which is accentuated by climate change and the Rohingya crisis. These migrants often reside in urban slums and struggle to access public services, which are already short in supply for existing slum dwellers. Given the inadequacy of governmental efforts, nonprofits have assumed responsibility for providing essential services such as housing, healthcare, and education. Would local slum-dwellers in Dhaka be willing to support such nonprofits financially? We deploy an in-person survey experiment with three frames (generic migrants, climate migrants, and religiously persecuted Rohingya migrants) to assess Dhaka slum-dwellers’ willingness to support a humanitarian charity that provides healthcare services to migrants. Bangladesh is noted as a climate change hotspot and its government is vocal about the climate issue in international forums. While we expected this to translate into public support for climate migrants, we find respondents are 16% less likely to support climate migrants in relation to the generic migrants. However, consistent with the government’s hostility towards Rohingya, we find that respondents are 9% less likely to support a charity focused on helping Rohingya migrants. Our results are robust even when we examine subpopulations such as recent arrivals in Dhaka and those who have experienced floods (both of which could be expected to be more sympathetic to climate migrants), as well as those who regularly follow the news (and hence are well informed about the climate and the Rohingya crisis).

Bangladesh faces a severe rural to urban migration challenge, which is accentuated by climate change and the Rohingya crisis. These migrants often reside in urban slums and struggle to access public services, which are already short in supply for existing slum dwellers. Given the inadequacy of governmental efforts, nonprofits have assumed responsibility for providing essential services such as housing, healthcare, and education. Would local slum-dwellers in Dhaka be willing to support such nonprofits financially? We deploy an in-person survey experiment with three frames (generic migrants, climate migrants, and religiously persecuted Rohingya migrants) to assess Dhaka slum-dwellers' willingness to support a humanitarian charity that provides healthcare services to migrants. Bangladesh is noted as a climate change hotspot and its government is vocal about the climate issue in international forums. While we expected this to translate into public support for climate migrants, we find respondents are 16% less likely to support climate migrants in relation to the generic migrants. However, consistent with the government's hostility towards Rohingya, we find that respondents are 9% less likely to support a charity focused on helping Rohingya migrants. Our results are robust even when we examine subpopulations such as recent arrivals in Dhaka and those who have experienced floods (both of which could be expected to be more sympathetic to climate migrants), as well as those who regularly follow the news (and hence are well informed about the climate and the Rohingya crisis).