The Right to Remain: How Natural Rights Led Governance Can Confront Climate Displacement

A disaster does not begin when a cyclone makes landfall, a river breaches its banks, or a storm surge enters a coastal settlement. It begins much earlier, when wetlands are filled, forests are cleared, rivers are obstructed, embankments are neglected, settlements are built without ecological planning, and vulnerable communities are denied secure access to land, water, livelihoods and public services.

Nor does disaster necessarily end when floodwaters recede. For displaced families, it may continue for years through homelessness, indebtedness, interrupted education, unsafe migration, exploitative employment, family separation, deteriorating health and the gradual loss of cultural and ecological belonging.

Disaster-induced displacement must therefore be understood not simply as a humanitarian emergency, but as a breakdown of human rights, natural rights, ecological integrity and intergenerational justice.

The central failure of conventional disaster governance is that it concentrates on saving people from hazards without adequately protecting the social and natural systems that allow them to remain safely where they belong. It evacuates communities but does not always restore their homes. It compensates damaged assets but rarely values lost relationships with land, rivers, forests and local culture. It finances reconstruction while allowing the ecological conditions that created displacement to deteriorate further.

Natural Rights Led Governance, or NRLG, offers an alternative: protect life by protecting the integrity, sovereignty and regenerative capacity of nature.

Bangladesh as a warning to the world

The 2026 report The human cost of disaster displacement in Bangladesh: A life-year approach to understanding impacts, published by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit, provides one of the clearest assessments yet of the continuing human burden of displacement.

Between 2008 and 2025, disasters triggered approximately 21.3 million internal displacements in Bangladesh, placing the country among the six most affected globally. More than 99 per cent were associated with weather-related hazards. Cyclones and storm surges accounted for approximately 11.3 million movements, while floods caused another 7.8 million.

These numbers refer to displacement movements rather than necessarily 21.3 million separate people. The same household may be uprooted repeatedly. This distinction matters because recurrent displacement creates a downward spiral: families lose assets, borrow to rebuild, recover only partially and are displaced again before they can restore their livelihoods.

At least half of these movements were associated with pre-emptive evacuations. Bangladesh’s investments in early warning systems, cyclone shelters and community preparedness have unquestionably prevented deaths. Yet evacuation is not the same as durable protection.

People may survive a cyclone but return to destroyed houses, saline farmland, polluted drinking water, damaged roads, dead livestock and collapsed local economies. Early warning may save the body from immediate danger while failing to protect the conditions required for a dignified life.

The challenge is no longer only how to move people away from hazards. It is how to preserve their right to remain safe, their right to return, and, where return is impossible, their right to relocate with dignity, security and choice.

Counting diminished lives, not only damaged assets

The most important contribution of the IDMC–RMMRU study is its use of a life-year approach. Conventional disaster assessments usually calculate damaged houses, roads, crops and public infrastructure. The life-year approach attempts to estimate the temporary reduction in quality of life experienced during displacement and recovery.

The report estimates that disaster displacement caused approximately 89,000 life-years lost in Bangladesh between 2008 and 2025, equivalent to around $1.7 billion in cumulative human welfare costs and an annual average of approximately $102 million.

These are not simply measurements of physical destruction. They reflect the human consequences of inadequate shelter, livelihood loss, interrupted education, declining health, insecurity, reduced social connection and prolonged uncertainty.

Cyclone Amphan in 2020 generated the largest estimated single-event burden, causing approximately 9,500 life-years loss, valued at around $184 million. The 2020 monsoon floods generated another 8,800 life-years lost, or approximately $169 million.

Yet the most significant finding is that nearly 70 per cent of the estimated human cost arose from recurrent small- and medium-scale events rather than only from spectacular catastrophes.

International attention normally intensifies after major cyclones, earthquakes or floods. However, repeated river erosion, local flooding, waterlogging, salinity intrusion and smaller storm surges may cumulatively destroy more wellbeing than one internationally visible disaster.

The disaster system is therefore biased toward dramatic events while remaining institutionally blind to accumulated suffering.

Climate migration is already a development reality

The World Bank’s Groundswell analysis projects that climate change could compel as many as 216 million people across six regions to move within their own countries by 2050. It also finds that decisive emissions reduction and resilient, inclusive development could reduce the projected scale of internal climate migration by as much as 80 per cent.

For Bangladesh, the World Bank has projected as many as 19.9 million internal climate migrants by 2050 under a high-impact scenario, almost half of the projected total for South Asia.

These projections are not destiny. Migration outcomes depend not only on temperature, rainfall and sea-level rise, but also on land governance, public investment, ecosystem protection, livelihood security, urban planning and people’s ability to adapt in place.

Migration may be voluntary and beneficial when people move with information, resources, legal protection and genuine choice. It becomes forced displacement when people lose control over whether, when and where they move.

The relevant question is therefore not simply how many people will migrate. The deeper questions are:

Who is being forced to move?

Who is able to remain safe?

Who bears the financial and social costs?

Who benefits from the land and resources left behind?

And does migration expand human freedom, or transfer people from one form of vulnerability to another?

The gendered geography of displacement

Change Initiative’s study, Assessment of Impacts of Climate Induced Migration in Bangladesh on Female Workers, demonstrates that climate-related displacement is not gender-neutral.

The study examined climate-induced migrant women living in Dhaka’s informal settlements and assessed their migration drivers, employment, income, skills, access to social protection, exposure to gender-based violence and ability to obtain legal support. It found that women’s vulnerability is intensified by lower income, limited education, weaker ownership of natural resources, insecure employment and unequal social responsibilities.

Women frequently move after river erosion, floods, salinity, livelihood collapse and other environmental pressures undermine rural survival. Upon reaching Dhaka, many enter domestic work, informal manufacturing, petty trading or other poorly paid and weakly protected employment.

Even where nominal income rises, wellbeing may not improve. Urban rent, food, transport, healthcare, sanitation and water costs are much higher. Employment is frequently insecure, and women may face harassment, unsafe accommodation, weak labour protection and limited access to formal justice.

The Change Initiative study also highlights how women’s adaptive capacity is constrained by unequal access to income, education, health, land and natural resources. Responsibilities for children, older people, food preparation, water collection and household survival can increase after displacement, while family and community support networks weaken.

The 2026 IDMC-RMMRU findings similarly show that recovery is deeply unequal. Among households that were poor before displacement, average monthly income rose from $67 to $111, but this largely represented recovery from an extremely low base. Only 381 of 1,467 poor households moved above the poverty line.

Among households previously above the poverty line, 20 per cent experienced absolute income losses, including 11 per cent whose incomes declined by more than 30 per cent.

Displacement, therefore, does not merely move poverty from rural to urban areas. It often intensifies poverty within a more expensive, precarious and socially fragmented environment.

The hazard may be natural; the disaster is governed

The term “natural disaster” often hides political responsibility.

Cyclones are a natural hazard. Seasonal flooding may be part of a river’s ecological cycle. But the scale of death, destruction and displacement is profoundly shaped by human decisions.

Wetland destruction removes natural water-storage capacity. Deforestation accelerates erosion and runoff. River encroachment restricts water flow. Unplanned roads and settlements obstruct drainage. Poorly designed embankments may protect one location while transferring risk elsewhere. Fossil-fuel emissions intensify climate hazards. Weak labour laws expose displaced workers to exploitation. Insecure land tenure prevents families from rebuilding safely.

The hazard may originate in nature, but the disaster is frequently manufactured through failed governance.

This distinction changes accountability. If displacement results partly from avoidable ecosystem destruction, negligent planning, pollution, corruption or climate inaction, it cannot be treated merely as an unfortunate natural event. It becomes a foreseeable violation of rights.

Displacement as a collapse of interconnected rights

Conventional governance separates people from nature. It treats rivers as water channels, forests as timber stocks, wetlands as unused land and displaced people as beneficiaries of relief.

NRLG begins with a different principle, human beings, communities and natural systems possess interconnected rights to exist, regenerate, remain secure and sustain life across generations.

When a river is polluted, narrowed or obstructed, the river loses its ecological integrity. Fishing communities simultaneously lose food, income, culture and identity.

When mangroves are destroyed, the ecosystem loses its ability to regenerate and coastal populations lose natural protection from cyclones and storm surges.

When agricultural soil becomes saline, the land loses biological productivity while farmers lose livelihoods, food sovereignty and territorial belonging.

Disaster displacement is therefore not the violation of one isolated right. It is a cascading collapse of:

• the right to life and physical safety;

• the right to remain safely in one’s homeland;

• the right to return or relocate voluntarily;

• the right to land, water, food and livelihood;

• the right to health, education and dignified shelter;

• the right to culture, community and territorial identity;

• women’s right to safety, employment and equal participation;

• the rights of ecosystems to exist, regenerate and perform their ecological functions; and

• the rights of future generations to inherit habitable territories.

From an NRLG perspective, compensation after displacement is necessary but insufficient. Governance must first prevent the destruction of ecological relationships that make settlements, livelihoods and cultures viable.

The NRLG solution: From managing displacement to protecting the right to remain

Natural Rights Led Governance provides a seven-pillar framework for addressing disaster displacement across prevention, preparedness, movement, recovery and long-term transformation.

1. Protection of life, habitat and property

The first obligation of disaster governance is not merely to evacuate people, but to protect the systems that sustain life. Governments should map displacement risk at household and ecosystem levels, combining information on hazards, poverty, housing, land tenure, health, gender, infrastructure and ecological degradation.

Critical investments must include resilient housing, freshwater systems, local healthcare, schools, safe shelters, communication networks and livelihood protection. Homes, livestock, seeds, fishing equipment, community facilities and culturally important places must be treated as components of survival, not secondary assets.

Early warning systems should be assessed not only by the number of lives saved, but also by whether people can return safely and recover without falling into debt or long-term displacement.

2. Nature justice and ecosystem restoration

NRLG recognises forests, wetlands, rivers, floodplains, mangroves, hills and coastal systems as living protective infrastructure.

Disaster-risk expenditure must therefore prioritise below-

• restoration of mangroves and coastal greenbelts;

• protection of wetlands and natural drainage;

• restoration of rivers and floodplains;

• prevention of hill cutting and deforestation;

• recovery of degraded agricultural soils;

• freshwater conservation in saline areas; and

• ecosystem-based adaptation designed with local communities.

Every major infrastructure or development project in a displacement-prone area should undergo a Natural Rights and Displacement Impact Assessment. This assessment should determine whether the project will obstruct ecological flows, increase erosion, reduce access to common resources or transfer disaster risk to poorer communities.

A project that protects an industrial zone by increasing flood risk for surrounding villages cannot be considered development. It is risk displacement through political power.

3. Rule by natural law and natural accountability

Displacement caused or intensified by negligent planning, illegal encroachment, pollution, ecosystem destruction or unsafe construction must trigger legal accountability.

NRLG requires clear duties for public agencies, corporations, financiers and contractors. Polluters and ecosystem destroyers should bear restoration and displacement costs through a strengthened polluter-pays and destroyer-restores principle.

Communities should have legal standing to challenge projects that threaten their land, livelihoods or ecological security. Independent natural-rights audits should examine whether embankments, energy projects, urban expansion, tourism developments and industrial zones increase displacement risk.

Public officials should be accountable not only for corruption or financial loss, but also for preventable ecological damage and foreseeable displacement.

4. Equity, integrity and shared rights

Disaster protection cannot be distributed according to wealth, political influence or land ownership alone.

Resources should be prioritised for people facing the greatest combined exposure: women, children, older people, persons with disabilities, landless families, Indigenous peoples, fishing communities, informal workers and households repeatedly displaced by erosion, flooding or storms.

Women must hold decision-making roles in shelter management, relocation planning, livelihood programmes, local disaster committees and ecosystem stewardship.

Social protection should become portable. Displaced people must not lose food assistance, healthcare, education or legal identity because they cross administrative boundaries.

Cash assistance should be complemented by secure housing, childcare, skills development, employment protection, access to finance and measures against gender-based violence.

Integrity also requires transparent beneficiary selection, public disclosure of rehabilitation budgets, social audits and community monitoring. Disaster programmes must not become opportunities for land grabbing, elite capture or procurement corruption.

5. Peaceful grievance and conflict-resolution mechanisms

Displacement commonly creates conflicts over land, compensation, tenancy, public services, employment and access to natural resources.

Every displacement-prone district and receiving city should establish accessible Natural Rights and Displacement Justice Councils. These bodies should include community representatives, women, local government, legal-aid organisations, environmental experts and independent civil society representatives.

They should resolve disputes involving-

• lost or disputed land titles;

• exclusion from compensation;

• unsafe relocation;

• eviction from informal settlements;

• conflicts between host and displaced communities;

• access to water, forests, fisheries and common land; and

• environmental damage caused by reconstruction projects.

Justice must be available before grievances become prolonged conflict.

6. Community stewardship and local sovereignty

Affected communities should not be treated as passive recipients of relief. They possess local knowledge about river behaviour, cyclone routes, water sources, safe locations, crop varieties, housing design and ecosystem change.

NRLG would establish community stewardship institutions such as:

• Community nature protection groups;

• Forest and Mangrove Stewardship Councils;

• Wetland Guardians;

• Coastal Resilience Committees;

• women-led water and sanitation groups; and

• neighbourhood displacement-response teams in receiving cities.

These institutions should receive direct public and climate finance, legal recognition, technical support and authority to monitor ecosystems and public projects.

Community-based monitoring should combine local knowledge with satellite data, early-warning technology and public risk databases. Information must be accessible in local languages and owned jointly by communities and public institutions.

The objective is not decentralisation without resources. It is genuine local sovereignty backed by finance, authority and accountability.

7. Legal recognition of the rights of nature

The final pillar addresses the root cause of displacement: the legal invisibility of nature.

Rivers, wetlands, forests, mangroves and other critical ecosystems should receive enforceable rights to exist, regenerate, maintain ecological flows and remain free from destructive pollution or encroachment.

Legal guardians should be appointed to represent these ecosystems, including local communities, scientists, public authorities and independent rights defenders.

Recognising the rights of nature would transform disaster governance. The destruction of a mangrove would no longer be considered merely a loss of timber or public land. It would be treated as an injury to a rights-bearing ecosystem and to the communities whose survival depends upon it.

This creates a legal foundation for preventing displacement before harm becomes irreversible.

An NRLG pathway across the displacement cycle

The practical application of NRLG can be organised around four stages.

Avert displacement

The first priority must be to enable people to remain safely in their communities.

This requires ecosystem restoration, resilient housing, livelihood diversification, freshwater security, secure land tenure, renewable energy, local health systems and climate-resilient agriculture.

Climate finance should support communities before they are displaced—not only after they become humanitarian cases.

Minimise unavoidable movement

Where temporary evacuation is necessary, movement should be safe, informed and inclusive.

Shelters must accommodate women, children, older people and persons with disabilities. They must provide safe sanitation, privacy, healthcare, protection from harassment, livestock arrangements and secure storage for documents and essential assets.

Evacuation planning must include return and recovery from the beginning.

Address displacement with dignity

When return is impossible, relocation must be voluntary, participatory and rights-based.

No family should be relocated to unsafe, environmentally degraded or economically isolated land. Relocation packages should include secure tenure, adequate housing, schools, healthcare, public transport, water, sanitation, livelihood opportunities and protection of cultural and community networks.

Communities should be relocated together where they choose, rather than dispersed through administrative convenience.

Regenerate rather than merely reconstruct

“Build Back Better” is inadequate if reconstruction reproduces the same ecological destruction and inequality.

NRLG calls for Build Back Regeneratively: restoring ecosystems, reducing future exposure, strengthening community institutions and ensuring that reconstruction leaves both people and nature more secure than before.

Cities must become destinations of adaptation, not warehouses of displacement

Dhaka and other urban centres increasingly receive people displaced by river erosion, cyclones, salinity and livelihood collapse. Yet cities often absorb them through informal settlements, insecure work and inadequate services.

Urban climate policy must therefore recognise receiving neighbourhoods as frontline adaptation zones.

Required measures include:

• affordable and safe rental housing;

• serviced land for low-income settlements;

• portable social protection;

• accessible water and sanitation;

• public healthcare and childcare;

• safe transport;

• skills recognition and vocational training;

• formalisation and protection of domestic and informal workers;

• protection against eviction and harassment; and

• investment in urban wetlands, drainage, trees and heat reduction.

Women displaced by climate impacts must not be forced to exchange ecological insecurity in rural areas for labour exploitation and unsafe housing in cities.

Financing displacement justice

The present global financing system is structurally inadequate. It releases humanitarian funds after major disasters but provides far less support for preventing displacement, restoring ecosystems or securing long-term livelihoods.

Displacement should be recognised within adaptation, loss-and-damage, development and social-protection finance.

NRLG requires a financing architecture based on five principles:

First, grants before loans. Vulnerable countries and displaced communities should not be pushed into debt to address climate impacts they did little to cause.

Second, prevention before emergency spending. A defined share of climate and disaster finance should be allocated to ecosystem restoration, resilient settlements and locally led adaptation.

Third, direct community access. Community stewardship organisations, women’s groups and local governments need simplified access to funding rather than dependence on complex international intermediaries.

Fourth, full-cost accounting. Assessments must include life-years lost, unpaid care work, ecological loss, cultural disruption and long-term health impacts, not only damaged infrastructure.

Fifth, accountability for high emitters and destructive investors. Climate finance must reflect historical responsibility, while corporations and financiers responsible for ecosystem degradation should contribute to restoration and compensation.

Global efforts remain valuable but fragmented

The UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement provides a framework for protecting people forced to move within their own countries, including people displaced by disasters. However, the principles are not a binding global treaty, and implementation depends primarily on national governments. (United Nations Legal Affairs)

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 calls on countries to reduce exposure and vulnerability, prevent new risks and strengthen resilience. UNDRR and its partners have also developed practical guidance to help governments incorporate displacement into disaster-risk strategies. (UNDRR)

Under the UN climate regime, the Task Force on Displacement, established through the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage following COP21, has developed recommendations to “avert, minimise and address” displacement. These include risk mapping, early warning, preparedness, integration into National Adaptation Plans, human-rights safeguards and mobilisation of finance for developing countries. (UNFCCC)

The Platform on Disaster Displacement, a state-led initiative following the Nansen Initiative, works to strengthen protection for people displaced in the context of disasters and climate change, including those who cross borders. The Nansen Protection Agenda was endorsed by 109 states in 2015. (Platform on Disaster Displacement)

The UN Secretary-General’s Action Agenda on Internal Displacement similarly seeks to improve prevention, protection and durable solutions. (United Nations)

These initiatives are necessary, but four major gaps remain.

First, responsibility is institutionally fragmented across climate, migration, humanitarian, development and disaster agencies.

Second, there is no comprehensive binding international framework guaranteeing protection and durable solutions for people displaced by climate and environmental breakdown.

Third, finance is inadequate, short-term and frequently debt-creating.

Fourth, existing frameworks remain predominantly human-centred. They seek to manage displaced populations but rarely establish enforceable duties to protect the rivers, forests, wetlands, coasts and soils whose destruction drives displacement.

This is the gap, NRLG addresses.

From human mobility governance to natural-rights governance

The global response must move beyond managing people after ecosystems collapse.

A rights-based international framework should recognise three connected entitlements:

1. The right to remain safely in one’s community through ecosystem protection, adaptation and livelihood security.

2. The right to move voluntarily, safely and with full legal and social protection.

3. The right of nature to survive and regenerate, so that displacement is not continually reproduced by ecological destruction.

International climate and disaster institutions should introduce natural-rights indicators into adaptation plans, loss-and-damage assessments and displacement strategies.

Countries should report not only how many people were evacuated or relocated, but also:

• how many people avoided displacement;

• how many returned safely;

• how many regained secure livelihoods;

• how many women obtained protected employment;

• how many hectares of wetlands, mangroves and forests were restored;

• how many rivers retained ecological flow;

• how much debt was avoided; and

• how many life-years were preserved.

These are more meaningful measures of resilience than the number of shelters built or projects approved.

Survival is not enough

Bangladesh has shown that early warning and community preparedness can significantly reduce disaster mortality. The next challenge is more difficult: ensuring that survival is not followed by years of poverty, exploitation and displacement.

A person rescued from a cyclone but condemned to unsafe housing, informal work, debt and permanent loss of homeland has been saved from immediate death but not protected from disaster.

The world must therefore move beyond counting evacuated people and reconstructed roads. It must ask how many years of healthy and dignified life were lost, how many women entered unsafe work, how many communities were fractured and how many natural systems were allowed to collapse.

Disaster displacement is the human geography of ecological injustice.

Natural Rights Led Governance offers a path from reactive disaster management to preventive and regenerative justice. It protects people by protecting nature, places communities at the centre of decision-making, holds destroyers accountable, guarantees equitable recovery and recognises that human sovereignty cannot exist without the sovereignty of the living systems that sustain us.

The real choice is not between migration and no migration. It is between forced displacement produced by ecological destruction and rights-based mobility within a resilient relationship between people, community and nature.

The objective of global disaster governance should therefore be clear: no person should be forced to lose home, dignity or identity because governments failed to protect the natural systems upon which life depends.

*M. Zakir Hossain Khan, Proponent of Transformative Natural Rights Led Governance Framework; Co-Founder and Managing Director, Change Initiative, a global think tank; and Editor in Chief, Nature Insights. Email: zhkhan@changei.earth

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Author: M. Zakir Hossain Khan

Originally published in: Change Initiative

This article is republished for archival and informational purposes. All rights remain with the original publisher.