Abstract

While the links between climate-induced migration and urban challenges have been documented, there remains a paucity of research, policy, and action on different challenges of urban poverty compared with rural poverty in Bangladesh. However, the urban poor have continued to be overlooked in development and climate contexts. This paper reviews the underlying factors of climate-induced population migration and its connection with multi-pluralistic challenges for urban poor individuals in Bangladesh. It also explains multiple responses to urban hazards and revisits urban policies related to resilience and sustainability. A desk review of different existing resources, such as academic papers, organizational research reports, newspapers clippings, and documentaries, was conducted to achieve the overall purpose for this paper. Both theoretical and empirical evidence were identified and mainstreamed by categorizing them into specific domains to reinvestigate the groundbreaking factors associated with climate migration and thereby demonstrate the bridge between policies and practices related to urban challenges. Marx’s conflict theory was applied to reiterate existing inequalities associated with urban problems and hazards and then contextualized to weigh and analyze newly generated urban disparities experienced at the individual to national level. Rising sea levels, natural hazards, sudden onset disasters were identified as the drivers of climate-induced migration that forcefully displace people from their homeland to nearby cities. Limited access to public healthcare services; huge population density; inadequate food, water, and sanitation overcrowding; lack of housing; limited coping mechanisms; and little adaptive capacity with climatic conditions seriously worsen the existing problems for urban poor in Bangladesh.