The research project Sustainable Livelihoods and Politics at the Margins: Environmental Displacement in South Asia explores how people perceive and negotiate their weather and climate related displacement, and how they struggle for their right to earn a sustainable living.

This four-year project (2018-2022) is funded by the Academy of Finland (decision number 318782) and led by anthropologist Professor Sirpa Tenhunen. The researchers of the project are Dayabati Roy, Jasim Mohammad Uddin and Jelena Salmi.

The broad aim of the project is to understand the process of environmental displacement and thereby generate novel ideas and insights to improve theory, policy and practice by means of which the environmental migrants’ right to sustainable livelihoods could be ensured.

The focus of the project is on the displaced people in Bangladesh and India, countries which have been ranked as being among the most vulnerable to climate change over the next 30 years. Two researchers of the project have observed the recent increase in climate change induced migration in their hometowns—Mohammad Jasim Uddin in Sylhet, Bangladesh and Dayabati Roy in Kolkata, India.