Climate change vulnerabilities : legal status of the displaced people

Bangladesh is a low-lying deltaic State, made up of watersheds and flat land in South Asia with a large number of rivers and many channels. Most of the communities live along the riverbanks and are mainly dependent on the flood plains for their livelihoods. As a result, they are very exposed to natural hazards such as floods, cyclones and droughts. The aim of this paper is to address this situation and to examine the impact of climate change on population displacement from and within Bangladesh. As legal recognition of displaced people is not available under the existing climate-change legal regime, this paper outlines the on-going argument and controversy with regard to climate-change displacement to determine the status of the displaced people under both international and Bangladeshi law. In addition, this paper suggests that there is a logical justification in bringing the rights of climate-change displaced people within the Bangladeshi legal framework.