Abdul Rahim never imagined he would abandon farming to pull a rickshaw in Khulna city.
For years, the small plot of land near his coastal village sustained his family. But repeated cyclones, erratic rainfall and declining crop yields gradually stripped away that livelihood. Eventually, staying became impossible.
Today, he pedals a rickshaw through the city’s crowded streets -- not because he wanted a different life, but because climate change left him with little choice.
More than 200 kilometres away, Naurin Akter tells a similar story.
Rising salinity and worsening living conditions in Barguna forced her family to leave their home. She now works as a domestic worker in Dhaka, one of thousands arriving in Bangladesh’s cities each year after environmental shocks made rural life increasingly unsustainable.
Their stories reflect a transformation unfolding across Bangladesh: climate change is no longer only destroying homes and farmland. It is quietly redrawing the country’s demographic map, pushing growing numbers of people towards already overcrowded cities.
And experts warn the country’s greatest climate challenge may no longer be protecting vulnerable villages, but preparing urban Bangladesh for the people already arriving.
The scale of the challenge is enormous.
According to the World Bank’s Groundswell report, Bangladesh could have 19.9 million internal climate migrants by 2050, one of the highest projected totals anywhere in the world.
A separate 2025 assessment by the Government of Bangladesh and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that around five million people are already living in situations of internal displacement linked to natural disasters.
But experts caution that these figures tell only part of the story.
People rarely leave home because of climate change alone.
Floods, cyclones, river erosion, salinity and drought often combine with poverty, unemployment, rising living costs, poor healthcare, limited education and family circumstances to push households towards migration.
As a result, many researchers now argue that the debate should move beyond identifying “climate migrants” and instead focus on how Bangladesh manages increasingly climate-driven population movement.
“Labelling someone a climate migrant does not solve the problem,” said Md Abul Basar, anthropologist, governance expert and team leader at Swisscontact Bangladesh.
“The real challenge is whether our cities are prepared to accommodate growing numbers of people with dignity.”
Most displaced families first move to nearby upazilas or district towns before eventually settling in larger urban centres such as Dhaka, Khulna and Chittagong.
For many, migration offers income but not security.
Large numbers settle in informal settlements where access to safe drinking water, sanitation, healthcare, education and secure housing remains limited. Most find work in the informal economy, earning unstable incomes with little social protection.
Abdul Rahim says moving to Khulna allowed him to earn enough to survive.
“But I left behind everything I had built.”
For Naurin, relocating to Dhaka brought employment, but not stability.
Urban planners say these individual stories are becoming part of a much larger national transformation.
Climate migration is reshaping labour markets, housing demand, healthcare, transport, education and municipal services, particularly in cities already struggling with congestion, pollution and inadequate infrastructure.
Bangladesh recognised the growing challenge by adopting the National Strategy on Internal Displacement Management in 2021, while development partners have expanded programs on climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction and migration governance.
Yet implementation remains uneven.
Many municipalities continue to struggle with limited financial resources, weak institutional capacity and growing pressure on public services.
Without long-term planning, experts warn, secondary cities could face the same unplanned expansion that has overwhelmed Dhaka.
Basar argues that urban planning must now become a central pillar of Bangladesh’s climate strategy.
Affordable housing, employment opportunities, healthcare, education, water supply and sanitation, he says, are no longer simply urban development issues, they are climate adaptation priorities.
“The question is no longer who moved because of climate change,” he said.
“The question is whether our cities are ready for the people who are already here, and those who will come.”
For Bangladesh, climate migration is no longer a future scenario.
It is already reshaping both the countryside and the cities.
The country’s next climate challenge may therefore not be measured only by rising seas or stronger cyclones, but by whether its urban centres can absorb millions seeking a safer place to build a new life.
