Environmental Displacement and the Restructuring of Childhood: An Environmental Justice Analysis of Charland Children in Bangladesh

• In Event: Children at the Fault Lines: Rights, Protection, and State Violence

Abstract

Riverbank erosion-induced displacement is one of the perennial, yet largely unexplored drivers, of child vulnerabilities in Bangladesh's charland region. Drawing on Environmental Justice and intersectionality frameworks, this paper investigates how riverbank erosion reconfigures childhood and creates environmental and developmental injustices among uthuli and chukani children in Jamuna River charlands of Bangladesh. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research relies on survey of 230 displaced children from 110 households in Char Chhinna village, focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, observation, and case studies. The results indicate that repeated displacement, land loss, and infrastructural neglect force children into long hours of household and income-generating labor, interrupt school attendance, heighten food insecurity, and make them vulnerable to unsafe sanitation and restricted healthcare. This also greatly reduces free time available for playing or other leisure activities. These effects are very unevenly distributed, with girls facing heavier domestic responsibilities and greater risks of early marriage, while boys are more often involved in hazardous and heavier labor.This study reveals that displacement is a kind of structural injustice that compresses childhood while reproducing inequality across generations. The research extends the scholarship on Environmental Justice by centering the lived experiences of children and therefore calls for urgent child-sensitive climate adaptation and social protection policies.

Authors

• Shammy Islam

• A B M Nurullah, Virginia Tech