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Understanding perception and adaptation strategies at a community level is important for achieving sustainable adaptation options in a climate-vulnerable area. A study was conducted in two villages of Khulna district, Bangladesh, through Focus Group Discussions to capture the perceptions of the community on climate change and variability, and also to understand the current strategies to cope/adapt with the changing situation in the context of agriculture. Some future adaptation options were also presented to the community for their opinion in the light of their experiences. Findings revealed that the weather is unpredictable and variability has increased over time with no positive outlook or aspect associated with this change. Local people perceived changes in rainfall patterns, resulting in delayed rice planting, decreased yield and damaged sesame and mungbean crops due to water-logging. The extended summer periods with increasing average temperatures have resulted in decreased growth duration of crops, increased pest infestations, and decreased yields. The increased period during which river water is saline limits the scope of irrigation with river water. Communities are adapting to this changing situation by adopting high yielding salt tolerant rice varieties, introducing new crops like sesame and mungbean, and adopting rice-fish culture with tilapia, carp and prawn instead of brackish water shrimp.

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This article explores the processes whereby control over land and water is exercised in the context of commercial shrimp cultivation in coastal Bangladesh. The authors draw on the insight that the exercise of control over resources implies both inclusion for some and exclusion for others, and that shifting the boundary between the two involves the deployment of four interacting ‘powers of exclusion’ — regulation, the market, force and legitimation — the effectiveness of which depends on specific historical conjunctures. The article uses a case study of a village in Khulna District to explore: (a) the processes by which poor farmers were excluded from their land by large shrimp farmers; (b) the ways in which villagers experienced the changes in land use and social relations associated with the shrimp boom; and (c) the conjunction of internal and external factors that enabled smallholders to collectively mobilize to reverse their exclusion from the land. Understanding these messy and contingent processes of exclusion and counter‐exclusion helps to inform strategies aimed at securing the property rights and livelihoods of the rural poor.

We explore the vulnerability to cyclones of different socio-economic groups and their individual and collective responses to cyclone-related disasters through case studies of two villages in southwest coastal Bangladesh. We take a political ecology perspective, drawing on the widely-used Pressure and Release (PAR) Model to structure our analysis of the physical exposure of the villages to cyclone-related hazards; the multilevel processes leading to the vulnerability of different groups within the villages; the differential impacts of two recent cyclones; and subsequent responses undertaken through the actions of individual households, collective action at the village level, and the government-initiated Cyclone Preparedness Program. We conclude that recognising the complexities of vulnerability to multiple, interlinked, recursive hazards is essential to developing better risk reduction strategies for the coastal zone. However, the root causes of vulnerability are embedded in the socio-political structures and processes that determine access to resources and influence in Bangladeshi society.

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