Fourteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

This paper explores why internal migration is not used as an adaptation mechanism in fishermen communities vulnerable to extreme climate events. It also assesses the extreme climate events vulnerabilities that happen to the coastal areas and the inhabitants of the fishermen communities. This qualitative study employed a semi-structured questionnaire to interview the people in addition to the observation method. The study considers two villages located in the Eastern part of Kalapara Upazila of Patuakhali district in Bangladesh. This study results indicate that participants are highly vulnerable to extreme events of climate change impacts due to their households’ socio-economic and geographical location. However, only a very few people migrate to escape from the vulnerabilities, while most of the people from the fishermen communities do not migrate to other places as they have strong connections with their communities. So, they develop their own traditional adaptation mechanism for their survival. Additionally, the study explores that migration as an adaptation is not an obvious solution among the fishermen due to various cultural and social factors such as Mohajon-Dadon system, migration costs, lack of skills and resources, fear of income security, etc.