Local Officials’ Perceptions of Climate Victim Management Challenges on Bangladesh’s Southeast Coast

Abstract

In Bangladesh, extreme weather events displace about one million people each year. The national government resettles these climate victims by allocating houses in so-called cluster villages. This paper examines how local disaster management officials manage the resettlement of climate victims in Bangladesh’s coastal areas. For this paper, we conducted a preliminary field work, questionnaire survey, and informal phone interviews. The questionnaire survey was conducted from March to July 2020 among 70 central government civil servants who worked as disaster management officials and played a pivotal role in local decision making for climate victim resettlement. This paper first examines how national disaster response policies were implemented in local areas before, during, and after disasters. Our questionnaire survey results show five management challenges local officials faced in managing displaced people: (1) local officials’ limited onsite experience, (2) varied impacts of natural disasters on islands and the mainland, (3) arbitrary engagement in disaster response actions, (4) lack of evacuation drills, and (5) weak coordination skills among relevant stakeholders. In particular, these challenges were acute among island officials. Our multiple regression analyses show that the respondents’ age and onsite work experience (p < 0.05) significantly affected their perceptions. Overall, these findings suggest a need to drastically improve local disaster governance capacity. This study offers insights into how countries with similar challenges may respond to climate-induced displacement in the future.