Camelia Dewan, PhD

This article explores how ship recycling—an essential part of the shipping economy—results in breaking up toxic vessels that leak hazardous materials into coastal communities and wetlands ecologies of South Asia. Drawing on multi-scaled and multisited ethnographic fieldwork with shipbreaking workers and local fishing communities in Chattogram, Bangladesh as well as with shipbreaking yard owners, maritime consultants, and government officials, we conceptualize toxic flows as a method to trace the lived experiences of those who are exposed to industrial pollution from shipbreaking. First, we propose that shipbreaking with its local toxic leakages constitutes a form of “structural violence” where violence is built into the logic of accumulation strategies in the maritime economy and shows up as unequal power relations that produce the conditions for unequal life chances. Second, we discuss Bangladesh’s recent efforts towards ratifying the Hong Kong Convention for the Safe and Environme...

This article examines processes of 'more-than-economic dispossession' arising from pollution in the interconnected forests, tides, canals, rivers and humid airsthe fluid commonsof the shipbreaking region Sitakunda. It ethnographically explores how minority Zele fishermen and shipbreaking workers are experiencing three interrelated forms of 'more-than-economic' dispossession. First, extra-economic means of accumulating profits by dismantling ships in cheaper countries enables dispossession by pollution in coastal ecologies. Second, more-than-economic points to the structures of political power inequalities making marginalised Bangladeshis exposed to toxics in ways that cannot be economically compensated. Lastly, morethan-economic draws on 'more-than-human' ethnographies: affective experiences of sensing, tasting, hearing and smelling pollution reveal how toxic residues biophysically damage the health of both human and more-than-human, resulting in the loss of ability to 'sustain life'. It thus joins the growing body of anthropological scholarship that expands on pollution as 'matter out of place' by taking its materiality seriously.

Climate reductive translations of migration attract international attention, but result in three problematic misreadings of Bangladesh’s socioecological landscape. First, attributing migration to climate change misreads coastal vulnerabilities and the importance of migration as a gendered livelihood strategy to deal with rural precarity and debt- both in the past and present. Second, misreading migration caused by brackish tiger-prawn cultivation, infrastructure-related waterlogging and riverbank erosion as ‘climate-induced’ hinders a discussion of long-term solutions for rural underemployment, salinisation, siltation and land loss. Lastly, framing climate change as causing ‘gendered displacement’ ignores the importance of affective kinship relations in shaping single women’s migration choices.

This article explores how ship recycling-an essential part of the shipping economy-results in breaking up toxic vessels that leak hazardous materials into coastal communities and wetlands ecologies of South Asia. Drawing on multi-scaled and multisited ethnographic fieldwork with shipbreaking workers and local fishing communities in Chattogram, Bangladesh as well as with shipbreaking yard owners, maritime consultants, and government officials, we conceptualize toxic flows as a method to trace the lived experiences of those who are exposed to industrial pollution from shipbreaking. First, we propose that shipbreaking with its local toxic leakages constitutes a form of "structural violence" where violence is built into the logic of accumulation strategies in the maritime economy and shows up as unequal power relations that produce the conditions for unequal life chances. Second, we discuss Bangladesh's recent efforts towards ratifying the Hong Kong Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships and its potential to contain these toxic flows. Lastly, we explore how ethnographically tracing 'toxic flows' i.e., the movement of these toxic substances, allows us to shift scales of analysis and make visible the different ways shipbreaking is perceived to negatively affect health and social reproduction beyond the boundary of shipbreaking yards. We conclude that structural violence such as reduced life expectancies due to poisonous exposure risks becoming embedded in the logic of oceanic forms of accumulation without state regulatory enforcement and supervision.

This article examines processes of 'more-than-economic dispossession' arising from pollution in the interconnected forests, tides, canals, rivers and humid airsthe fluid commonsof the shipbreaking region Sitakunda. It ethnographically explores how minority Zele fishermen and shipbreaking workers are experiencing three interrelated forms of 'more-than-economic' dispossession. First, extra-economic means of accumulating profits by dismantling ships in cheaper countries enables dispossession by pollution in coastal ecologies. Second, more-than-economic points to the structures of political power inequalities making marginalised Bangladeshis exposed to toxics in ways that cannot be economically compensated. Lastly, morethan-economic draws on 'more-than-human' ethnographies: affective experiences of sensing, tasting, hearing and smelling pollution reveal how toxic residues biophysically damage the health of both human and more-than-human, resulting in the loss of ability to 'sustain life'. It thus joins the growing body of anthropological scholarship that expands on pollution as 'matter out of place' by taking its materiality seriously.

This special issue on ‘“Fluid Dispossessions’: Contested Waters in Capitalist Natures” examines the multiple and mutable relationships between water, dispossession and property. We use ‘fluid dispossessions’ as an analytical prompt to examine the different ways in which water’s biophysical properties, its material fluidity and movements (and the more-than-human species that move with it), shape processes of capitalist extraction, accumulation and dispossession. Fluid dispossessions go beyond the power politics of controlling water as a resource to include indirect and more-than-economic forms of dispossession. By analysing emic understandings of dispossession, we draw on ‘fluid dispossessions’ to reject binary categorisations of liquid:solid in order to reveal the diversity of ways capitalist extractive activities may disrupt existing affective, ecological, or spiritual relations with water. This can cause more-than-economic forms of dispossession such as the loss of social reproduction, emotional distress, loss of health, the rupturing of multispecies relations and local care practices of waterscapes.

Climate reductive translations of migration attract international attention, but result in three problematic misreadings of Bangladesh’s socioecological landscape. First, attributing migration to climate change misreads coastal vulnerabilities and the importance of migration as a gendered livelihood strategy to deal with rural precarity and debt- both in the past and present. Second, misreading migration caused by brackish tiger-prawn cultivation, infrastructure-related waterlogging and riverbank erosion as ‘climate-induced’ hinders a discussion of long-term solutions for rural underemployment, salinisation, siltation and land loss. Lastly, framing climate change as causing ‘gendered displacement’ ignores the importance of affective kinship relations in shaping single women’s migration choices.

Climate reductive translations of migration attract international attention, but result in three problematic misreadings of Bangladesh’s socioecological landscape. First, attributing migration to climate change misreads coastal vulnerabilities and the importance of migration as a gendered livelihood strategy to deal with rural precarity and debt- both in the past and present. Second, misreading migration caused by brackish tiger-prawn cultivation, infrastructure-related waterlogging and riverbank erosion as ‘climate-induced’ hinders a discussion of long-term solutions for rural underemployment, salinisation, siltation and land loss. Lastly, framing climate change as causing ‘gendered displacement’ ignores the importance of affective kinship relations in shaping single women’s migration choices.

The Ganges-Brahmaputra (GB) delta is one of the most disaster-prone areas in the world due to a combination of high population density and exposure to tropical cyclones, floods, salinity intrusion and other hazards. Due to the complexity of natural deltaic processes and human influence on these processes, structural solutions like embankments are inadequate on their own for effective hazard mitigation. This article examines nature-based solutions (NbSs) as a complementary or alternative approach to managing hazards in the GB delta. We investigate the potential of NbS as a complementary and sustainable method for mitigating the impacts of coastal disaster risks, mainly cyclones and flooding. Using the emerging framework of NbS principles, we evaluate three existing approaches: tidal river management, mangrove afforestation, and oyster reef cultivation, all of which are actively being used to help reduce the impacts of coastal hazards. We also identify major challenges (socioeconomic,...

Goods moved on board container ships constitute 70 percent of all world cargo by economic value, which makes container ships vital things in the broader agglomeration of contemporary global capitalism. These vessels are in themselves also containers of other forms of value: they on occasion store, move, and disperse noneconomic forms of social worth. Building on the insights of critical logistics studies and coupling them with anthropological insights on value, the article proposes an ethnographic “life-cycle” approach to the study of container ships that broadens maritime anthropology to encompass contemporary forms of seaborne capitalism. With the container vessel functioning as a connecting device between different “sited” fieldwork experiences in shipbuilding, shipping, and shipbreaking, such a collaborative effort can bring the larger system of maritime transportation into focus. Furthermore, when viewed through the value-within-life-cycle prism, the container ship may present ...

Perilously close to sea level and vulnerable to floods, erosion, and cyclones, Bangladesh is one of the top recipients of development aid earmarked for climate change adaptation. Yet, to what extent do adaptation projects address local needs and concerns? Combining environmental history and ethnographic fieldwork with development professionals, rural farmers, and landless women, Misreading the Bengal Delta critiques development narratives of Bangladesh as a "climate change victim." It examines how development actors repackage colonial-era modernizing projects, which have caused severe environmental effects, as climate-adaptation solutions. Seawalls meant to mitigate against cyclones and rising sea levels instead silt up waterways and induce drainage-related flooding. Other adaptation projects, from saline aquaculture to high-yield agriculture, threaten soil fertility, biodiversity, and livelihoods. Bangladesh's environmental crisis goes beyond climate change, extending...

Volume 7 | Issue 2 Dewan, C.; Buisson, M.-C. and Mukherji, A. 2014. The imposition of participation? The case of participatory water management in coastal Bangladesh. Water Alternatives 7(2): 342-366 Dewan et al.: The imposition of participation in Bangladesh ABSTRACT: Community-based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) has been promoted as part of the development discourse on sustainable natural resources management since the mid-1980s. It has influenced recent water policy in Bangladesh through the Guidelines for Participatory Water Management (GPWM) where community-based organisations are to participate in the management of water resources. This paper reviews the extent of success of such participatory water management. It does so by first discussing the changing discourses of participation in Bangladesh's water policy from social mobilisation to decentralised CBNRM. Second, Bangladesh is used as a case study to draw attention to how the creation of separate water management...

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among local communities and shipbreaking workers, this essay focuses on the lived experiences of toxicity in the rapidly industrializing zone of Sitakunda, Bangladesh. Shipbreaking is receiving attention as a zone of toxic exposure. There is pressure for increased regulation and protection for workers. In contrast, other forms of pollution in the industrial zone of Sitakunda, such as water, air and noise pollution, are neglected or ignored. Worries about pollution and health highlight the unevenness of promises of development to come, also expressed by marginalized fishing communities structurally excluded from industrialization. My interlocutors describe unnayan (economic development) as bishakto (poisonous, toxic). I conceptualize this as ‘toxic development’ to draw attention to how ‘ordinary people’ (migrant workers, fishing and agricultural communities, shipbreaking workers and manual labourers) without capital, land or social networks of influence endure poisonous industrial activities that both create livelihoods and destroy them.

"For those more than 900 million and 2.6 billion people that lack access to adequate water supply and basic sanitation (WaterAid, 2011), the question remains: From where will the big push come to significantly improve water services for the poor? In regions of the greatest need to develop water services, such as in Sub-Saharan Africa, a huge investment gap remains. Water Aid (2011) estimates an annual funding gap in Sub-Saharan Africa of USD 15 billion and assesses that on average there is a need for spending 3.5 per cent of GDP on water and sanitation to reach the MDGs on water. Most countries in the region spend in fact well below one percent of GDP on water services. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) created by the United Nations and committed to by almost all the governments of the world in 2000, focused on ending poverty by targeting a number of development areas.The MDG on water and sanitation states to halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. However, the rapidly growing populations and international financial crises make the challenges of reaching the MDG on water and sanitation services formidable. Some countries are on track to reach the water supply target (South-East Asia) but most countries are off-track to reach the sanitation target (most low income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa) (WaterAid, 2011). Typically water supply and sanitation provision has been a heavily government subsidized public service to the urban middle class and higher income groups. Poor people suffer most from water service shortages in the form of health impacts, loss of income, economic productivity and social dignity. As a result of government failures to cater for their populations, bi -and multilateral organizations started in the early 1990s and onwards to emphasize on increasing the role of the private sector, market oriented solutions and the formation of public-private partnerships (PPPs) as alternative means of delivering services to poor people. Typical targets set were to extend the number of people with connections to the municipal water grid, reduce unaccounted for water, improve cost-recovery and increase investments. The engagement of private sector and formation of PPPs was seen as a new development panacea and high expectations that private sector could succeed where public sector had failed. Many developing countries opened up the water services sector for increased private sector participation and potential competition. In several cases, this also led to national controversy and opposition. However, the results of private sector engagement and PPPs have fallen short of expectations and as a result, top-down and long-term PPPs, such as water services concessions, are increasingly questioned as means to reduce poverty. The main theme of this chapter is to better understand the changing role and perception of PPPs during the past decade and point to some emerging trends of redefining PPPs. This chapter argues that the enthusiasm of PPPs, characterized by long term concessions and leases in major urban centers in middle and lower middle level income countries, by bi- and multilateral agencies as seen in the 1990s seems to have worn off significantly due to the very mixed results. It is explored whether PPPs in water can find new entry points for making contributions to improved access to water supply and sanitation, particularly among poorer sections of society, or if PPPs now are considered as something that may work under certain conditions but only make marginal impacts in developing countries. This study will approach these issues through analysing the shifting perceptions of private sector and the state to changing trends in water services in urban areas and the rise of new actors and partnerships. "

Community-based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) has been promoted as part of the development discourse on sustainable natural resources management since the mid-1980s. It has influenced recent water policy in Bangladesh through the Guidelines for Participatory Water Management (GPWM) where community-based organisations are to participate in the management of water resources. This paper reviews the extent of success of such participatory water management. It does so by first discussing the changing discourses of participation in Bangladesh’s water policy from social mobilisation to decentralised CBNRM. Second, Bangladesh is used as a case study to draw attention to how the creation of separate water management organisations has been unable to promote inclusive participation. It argues that the current form of decentralisation through a CBNRM framework has not resulted in its stated aims of equitable, efficient, and sustainable management of natural resources; rather it has dupli...

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among local communities and shipbreaking workers, this essay focuses on the lived experiences of toxicity in the rapidly industrializing zone of Sitakunda, Bangladesh. Shipbreaking is receiving attention as a zone of toxic exposure. There is pressure for increased regulation and protection for workers. In contrast, other forms of pollution in the industrial zone of Sitakunda, such as water, air and noise pollution, are neglected or ignored. Worries about pollution and health highlight the unevenness of promises of development to come, also expressed by marginalized fishing communities structurally excluded from industrialization. My interlocutors describe unnayan (economic development) as bishakto (poisonous, toxic). I conceptualize this as ‘toxic development’ to draw attention to how ‘ordinary people’ (migrant workers, fishing and agricultural communities, shipbreaking workers and manual labourers) without capital, land or social networks of influence endure poisonous industrial activities that both create livelihoods and destroy them.

THIS BRIEF EXPLORES A LOCAL ontology of health and purity
of food in Bangladesh to discuss the effects of agricultural
“modernization” and how it is transforming people’s relationship
to the land and ultimately their sense of self and
well-being. It contributes to existing debates on the moral
dimensions of what constitutes good food by looking at the
tension between globally good foods such as high-yielding
varieties of rice that aim to combat hunger and local (desi)
rice, grown more slowly and without (imported, nonquality
assured) agrochemicals, which is perceived as purer, tastier,
and more nutritious.

This article examines whether the use of climate change as a ‘spice’ in order to attract donor funding may instead exacerbate existing environmental problems. The World Bank’s latest adaptation project in coastal Bangladesh aims to create higher and wider embankments against rising sea levels. This disregards a long history of how embankments, by stopping beneficial monsoon inundations, result in dying rivers and damaging floods that devastate rural livelihoods. Bangladeshi ‘development brokers’ must therefore balance their roles as project employees supporting embankments as adaptation, and as locals knowledgeable about their harmful effects. The article shows how donors, NGOs, consultants and government bodies with different agendas, priorities and knowledge backgrounds ‘translate’ climate change to legitimise their activities. It contributes to debates about the politics of environmental knowledge production by arguing that development brokerage helps explain why some climate adaptation projects increase environmental vulnerability, while others address local needs.

This article examines the historical evolution of participatory water management in coastal Bangladesh. Three major shifts are identified: first, from indigenous local systems managed by landlords to centralized government agencies in the 1960s; second, from top-down engineering solutions to small-scale projects and people’s participation in the 1970s and 1980s; and third, towards depoliticized community-based water management since the 1990s. While donor requirements for community participation in water projects have resulted in the creation of ‘depoliticized’ water management organizations, there are now increasing demands for involvement of politically elected local government institutions in water management by local communities.

For those more than 900 million and 2.6 billion people that lack access to adequate water supply and basic sanitation (WaterAid, 2011), the question remains: From where will the big push come to significantly improve water services for the poor? In regions of the greatest need to develop water services, such as in Sub-Saharan Africa, a huge investment gap remains. Water Aid (2011) estimates an annual funding gap in Sub-Saharan Africa of USD 15 billion and assesses that on average there is a need for spending 3.5 per cent of GDP on water and sanitation to reach the MDGs on water. Most countries in the region spend in fact well below one percent of GDP on water services.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) created by the United Nations and committed to by almost all the governments of the world in 2000, focused on ending poverty by targeting a number of development areas.The MDG on water and sanitation states to halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. However, the rapidly growing populations and international financial crises make the challenges of reaching the MDG on water and sanitation services formidable. Some countries are on track to reach the water supply target (South-East Asia) but most countries are off-track to reach the sanitation target (most low income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa) (WaterAid, 2011).
Typically water supply and sanitation provision has been a heavily government subsidized public service to the urban middle class and higher income groups. Poor people suffer most from water service shortages in the form of health impacts, loss of income, economic productivity and social dignity. As a result of government failures to cater for their populations, bi -and multilateral organizations started in the early 1990s and onwards to emphasize on increasing the role of the private sector, market oriented solutions and the formation of public-private partnerships (PPPs) as alternative means of delivering services to poor people. Typical targets set were to extend the number of people with connections to the municipal water grid, reduce unaccounted for water, improve cost-recovery and increase investments. The engagement of private sector and formation of PPPs was seen as a new development panacea and high expectations that private sector could succeed where public sector had failed. Many developing countries opened up the water services sector for increased private sector participation and potential competition. In several cases, this also led to national controversy and opposition. However, the results of private sector engagement and PPPs have fallen short of expectations and as a result, top-down and long-term PPPs, such as water services concessions, are increasingly questioned as means to reduce poverty.

The main theme of this chapter is to better understand the changing role and perception of PPPs during the past decade and point to some emerging trends of redefining PPPs. This chapter argues that the enthusiasm of PPPs, characterized by long term concessions and leases in major urban centers in middle and lower middle level income countries, by bi- and multilateral agencies as seen in the 1990s seems to have worn off significantly due to the very mixed results. It is explored whether PPPs in water can find new entry points for making contributions to improved access to water supply and sanitation, particularly among poorer sections of society, or if PPPs now are considered as something that may work under certain conditions but only make marginal impacts in developing countries.

This study will approach these issues through analysing the shifting perceptions of private sector and the state to changing trends in water services in urban areas and the rise of new actors and partnerships.

This chapter combines long-term ethnographic fieldwork and archival research to complicate current discussions of floods to show that embankments were built long before climatic change was identified as a problem. It shows the ways in which climate reductionism works alongside a long history of development interventions that ignore local context by means of simplification (see Scott 1998), and illustrates how the colonial state simplifies local ecology in order to expand land-based infrastructure such as embankments, railways and roads, replacing waterways as the main mode of transport. I argue that narratives of improvement, whether through railways, flood protection or climate-change adaptation, have the potential to enable simplification in ways that increase the financial interests of particular actors, both within state administrations and international organizations, at the cost of environmental concerns. I first discuss anthropology’s role in deconstructing the knowledge production of climate change in development projects, and the importance of historically grounded ethnographies to counter simplified narratives. Climatic change involves changing temperatures and variabilities in precipitation and humidity: effects that are already becoming known in Bangladesh as monsoon patterns are shifting. However, in a deltaic region known for its heavy sedimentation, attributing all floods to rising sea levels due to melting ice caps caused by climate change is problematic. I use archival research and oral histories to trace the environmental history of embankments (sea walls) and to highlight the ways in which embankments changed from ‘salinity-protection’ infrastructure during the East India Company deforestation of the Sundarbans to ‘flood-protection’ infrastructure from the 1850s onwards, and the ways they have contributed to damaging floods in the coastal zone. I conclude that the current reading of coastal Bangladesh as a ‘victim of climate change’ requiring higher and wider embankments is unsustainable, as it ignores the way these very embankments exacerbate siltation and increase the risk of damaging flood. Climate change in Bangladesh, so far as many international experts are concerned, is about rising sea levels causing floods, but as this chapter demonstrates, floods in Bangladesh are not just about rising sea levels (cf. Barnes 2015: 143).