By Steven Miron, Refugee Law Initiative, School of Advanced Study University of London, United Kingdom

The IASC’s Framework on Durable Solutions for Internally Displaced Persons states that displacement is considered “resolved” only when 1) affected communities have returned home or settled and fully integrated elsewhere and 2) all the adverse effects of displacement have been addressed through a multifaceted approach that considers safety and security, housing and WASH, livelihoods and standard of living, access to services including healthcare and education, participation in community and civic life, non-discrimination and legal and human rights.

The ongoing field research conducted by the Refugee Law Initiative in Bangladesh, supported generously by the Robert Bosch Stiftung, demonstrates the need for a multifaceted approach to prevent, minimize, and address displacement due to climate change. Additionally, it underscores the importance of integrating durable solutions for displacement within the emerging Loss and Damage framework of the UNFCCC.

In one administrative Union in the southwest coastal region near the Bay of Bengal, Super Cyclone Amphan (2020) displaced approximately 5000 of the 36,000 residents, primarily from the three most exposed wards. Many permanently lost homes, land and livelihoods as Amphan cut new saltwater canals where people lived and worked. Twice-daily tidal flooding, caused by multiple breaks in the levy, lasted two years until the embankment was repaired, prolonging human suffering and leading to further losses and damages – reduced access to schools, health facilities, markets and services, and worsening poverty, indebtedness and food insecurity.

People who remain displaced in the Union today, as well as many who were involuntarily immobile during Amhan, spoke of wanting to relocate elsewhere but said they lacked the means to leave during and after the super cyclone. Among both displaced and immobile male residents, exploitative and often dangerous debt-bonded seasonal labour migration increased in the aftermath of the cyclone. As a consequence, women, children, older people and people with disabilities or illnesses were left behind, isolated and with diminished means to cope. Several interviewees spoke of mental health issues, gender-based violence and other trauma during and after Amphan. Female childhood marriage, already common in the Union, increased.

In 2022, the situation began to improve. Under the leadership of a newly elected Union Chairman, the embankment was finally repaired, stopping the saltwater tidal flooding. Residents of the Union and the Chairman together took the bold step of curtailing widespread shrimp farming, which had degraded agricultural land, weakened natural defences against storm surges and contributed to food insecurity. When we visited the Union in the fall of 2024, agriculture was recovering. Many people displaced during Amphan had returned. Some, who had undertaken debt-bonded labour migration for several years, now had the means to remain in the Union year-round rather than toil in distant brick kilns or on dangerous fishing boats. These are positive signs that some of the causes and consequences of displacement are being addressed.

Yet, the recovery in the Union is partial and fragile. Critical levies remain vulnerable, while other disaster risk reduction measures are insufficient. Recent livelihood and food security gains could be lost to the next super cyclone. Storm-resilient housing is still rare, as are climate-resilient livelihoods, with several women reporting few opportunities outside of traditional family agriculture and aquaculture. Many, particularly those who remain displaced on eroding riverbanks on the Union’s periphery, still have difficulty accessing services and schools because of the remoteness of their temporary abodes and the newly formed canals that have made land travel difficult. Levels of precarity remain far greater than pre-Amphan times.

The multifaceted criteria for a durable solution constitute a “high bar”. In the context of climate change loss and damage, the bar has to be high. Climate and mobility justice requires addressing all ‘loss and damage’ contributing to and resulting from displacement. Critically, solutions’ durability necessitates integrated, multifaceted approaches to addressing displacement.

Our fieldwork also highlights how the conventional “durable solutions bar”– the IASC Framework’s benchmark criteria for when a solution has been achieved – is still insufficiently high. Restoring people to pre-disaster displacement conditions – or to parity with non-displaced populations – won’t adequately address growing climatic risks. In this Union, which faces increasing loss and damage from sea level rise, saline intrusion, riverbank erosion, intensifying cyclones and extreme heat, unless the root causes of vulnerability and exposure that led to previous displacements are addressed, repeated displacements, protracted displacements and associated erosive coping behaviors, such as debt-bonded labour migration, are likely to become even more commonplace.

Closer integration of disaster risk reduction practices into durable solutions approaches – and vice versa – is an obvious requirement for averting, minimising and addressing loss and damage. So, too, is the application of human mobility and durable solutions lenses to ongoing and future climate adaptation and development work.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of AIDMI.