Accumulation, Dispossession, and Environmental Degradation: Neoliberal Political Ecology in Bangladesh

• In Event: Student Forum Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Roundtable 10: Environment and Inequality

Abstract

Neoliberal reforms have reshaped development across the Global South and generated economic growth while intensifying ecological degradation. This paper examines Bangladesh as a critical case of these contradictions. Since the 1980s, privatization, deregulation, and export-led growth strategies have expanded foreign investment and industrial production. Although Bangladesh’s development is often interpreted through the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), evidence suggests that environmental harm has persisted rather than declined. Drawing on Marxist political ecology, this study argues that environmental degradation in Bangladesh is structurally embedded in neoliberal accumulation. Using a qualitative political economy approach, it analyzes three export-oriented sectors: Ready-Made Garments, energy, and shrimp aquaculture. Across these sectors, land, water, and energy systems have been commodified to sustain global production networks, while ecological and social costs are concentrated locally. Water pollution from textile production, fossil-fuel expansion, and coastal dispossession linked to shrimp farming demonstrate how export competitiveness relies on ecological externalization. Bangladesh’s experience challenges EKC assumptions and highlights the limits of market-based environmental governance in addressing socio-ecological inequality.

Author

• Tanjida Islam, University of Tennessee, Knoxville