DELTAS OF CHANGE

River deltas are dynamic landscapes formed through the combination of sediment deposition and coastal processes, and the fertile soils, abundant waterways, and diverse ecosystems of river deltas have attracted people for millennia. However, deltas rank among the most vulnerable regions in the world to climate change impacts, thereby bringing questions about their long-term sustainability to the fore. Deltas have accordingly become important sites for large-scale interventions aimed at securing these systems against unfolding and projected environmental threats, particularly those associated with accelerating sea level rise and increasing storm frequency and intensity. Such efforts are especially evident in the mega-deltas of Vietnam and Bangladesh, where billions of dollars of climate finance have been mobilized to buttress the Mekong and Ganges-Brahmaputra deltas against climate change. However, examination of climate adaptation measures in these states reveals an apolitical and ahistorical framing of hazards that erases complex political and economic factors that underpin social vulnerability to environmental change. Ethnographic and textual analysis of capital-intensive adaptation interventions also indicates a prevailing concern among planners and development practitioners with enhancing economic productivity as a mechanism for increasing resilience despite evidence that precarity among the most vulnerable has worsened in the midst of rapid economic growth in Vietnam and Bangladesh. In this talk, I present findings from a longitudinal analysis of vulnerability and adaptation in two Asian deltas to address the question “what is being secured, where, and for whom?” This work indicates that interventions designed to stabilize deltas against climate change ignore the dynamism inherent to deltas and are inadvertently exacerbating people’s vulnerability to hazards in these environments.