Blog

Women Digital Ambassador: Linking agents to cooperatives for parity in financial inclusion

Posted on by MSC

In the previous blog, we discussed how Women Digital Ambassadors have their tailored digital business training. We also mentioned that linking women cooperatives to the agent banking network brings financial products and services closer to women’s reach—eradicating barriers and obstacles to access.

Digital transformation fostered a growing number of female banking agents

The number of agents in Indonesia grew exponentially during the pandemic. In 2021, the number rose from 1.24 million in September to 1.45 million in December. Presently, 35 national and regional banks serve the branchless banking (Laku Pandai) agent network across more than 511 Indonesian regencies or cities in 33 provinces. However, the expansion of agents concentrates on Java Island at around 64.18%. West Java province has the highest density (18.79%) of agents, while Maluku and Papua provinces have the lowest density at 2.02%. Regrettably, gender-disaggregated data is absent on agent ownership, making it difficult to monitor the growth of female agents.

Despite the missing data on female agents in Indonesia, mounting evidence worldwide shows that applying a gender lens to agent networks can help identify these opportunities and threats that affect the expansion of their reach. A previous MSC study on female business correspondents or BC agents resonates with the everyday challenges of recruiting more female agents, which require more resources and effort.

Female agents face several challenges in their path. Even as they maintain their business, female agents: 1) need to convince their families to permit them to start working as agents; 2) face mobility and safety challenges in commuting; 3) can only have fewer working hours due to the more significant burden of domestic responsibilities; and 4) meet greater challenges with technology due to low prior exposure.


Starting in June 2022, we gradually onboarded three cooperatives under the Women Digital Ambassador project in Tangerang, Bantul, and Karawang regencies. We partnered with BRI (Bank Rakyat Indonesia) to connect the BRILink agents to women’s cooperatives and bring financial products and services to women in rural areas. Our agent in Tangerang has regularly served customers from cooperative members and the public. Monthly, they conduct ~114 transactions.

Photo 1. Ibu Neng, the BRILink Operator in Tangerang

We plugged in MSC’s Datin app to make monitoring and evaluation more effective. The app helps MSC supervise the flow of transactions conducted by each agent remotely. We found out that linking women’s cooperatives to agent networks presents unique challenges:

  1. Cooperative members must reach a consensus for careful decision-making

Unlike retail-based agents, onboarding a legal entity, such as a cooperative, to the agent business requires more documents. Onboarding cooperatives requires several signatures and IDs from the cooperative’s management. The service provider’s staff helped ease the process and tailor different criteria to the specific conditions of each cooperative. of criteria was also made regarding support and the type of device used. For cooperative members, the service provider gave an electric data capture (EDC) machine from the beginning of the application process, unlike the other agents that began with the mobile application, BRILink Mobile.


Getting consensus from cooperative members on the agent onboarding process also took time. The addition of BRILink to the cooperative features is considered a new business unit in the organization. Therefore, members have to agree and commit to growing the business further. Members also decided to re-invest the profits from BRILink transactions into the cooperatives’ account, which will be distributed at every year-end as part of the dividend.

Photo 2. BRILink agent in Bantul, Yogyakarta, with our Women Digital Ambassadors

  1. Modalities for BRILink operators’ candidates include: digitally savvy, committed, and trustworthy

The cooperative boards selected the operators from active members. Ideal candidates had to have a good reputation, be honest, and be sociable. They also had to have no issues with moving around to do their job, which also broke from the social norm where women are usually embedded with familial responsibilities and norms that limit their operational capabilities. Most of our agent operators know how to ride a motorbike, so they can hop from one cooperative group meeting to another to complete the transactions.


Although relatively tech-savvy, the operators still need close support from the provider’s staff to overcome technical glitches. We created a group chat among agents to allow them to discuss issues and experiences to smoothen the onboarding and familiarization process. Agents also need to practice soft skills to serve the customers, especially women—a skill equally crucial to the technical understanding of the operations. Agents must be equipped with complaint-handling and conflict-resolution methods. The operators have to balance the two aspects to acquire and retain customers.

Photo 3. An operator conducts a transaction during group meeting

  1. The high mobilization of agents helps extend their reach instead of depending on walk-in customers

Although cooperatives have an office premise, in this case, cooperative members seldom transact over the counter. Transactions usually occur during group meetings. Thus operators should proactively seize opportunities by attending various group gatherings to achieve the transaction target.

Although most agents are mobile, we also equip the premises with BRILink branding and signage to gain walk-in customers from the surrounding neighborhood. Our observations showed that WhatsApp and Facebook are popular among community members. Thus, we designed an e-flyer for circulation online to gain customers and spread awareness. The flyer advertised that the cooperative now offers certain financial services.

  1. Liquidity and rebalancing become constant issues when agents start operations.

Considering the account is under the cooperative, topping up the working capital requires approval from the cooperative head. The distance between the agent and the nearest bank or ATM also hinders the agent from regular rebalancing. This additional layer of the process affects timely transactions. Operators sometimes pause their business and turn down potential transactions when they rebalance liquidity.

“With only IDR 3 million capital, I struggle to plan the right times and frequency for rebalancing. I usually go to the nearest bank up to five times a month for rebalancing and spend around IDR 10,000 per visit. Sometimes, I ran out of balance when the bank is already closed, so I had to use my money to conduct transactions.” —WDA agent in Karawang

Photo 4. E-flyer for circulation through WhatsApp group and road signage at BRILink Bantul

However, when the number of transactions grows, operators become familiar with the rebalancing issues and start forecasting the cash-in-hand and the amount of money in the account to prevent a cash deficit.

  1. Increasing the volume of transactions means a growing amount of capital is needed to operate the business.

After operators found ways to cope with rebalancing issues, they indicated that the cooperative struggled to inject more capital into the agency business due to a lack of cash. The agent in Tangerang, for example, started with IDR 3.5 million, but after a few months of operations, the amount increased to IDR ~10—15 million. However, this amount remains insufficient to cater to large transactions, and agents must rebalance it frequently to ensure sufficient cash-in-hand and floating balance. Although the provider offers an agent lending product, only high-performing agents can access the loan. Therefore, flexible, short-term financing options can help new agents scale up their operations.

“We started with a small amount of capital because the cooperative wanted to see how this new business ran. We feared investing many of our members’ savings in something unproven. We will monitor the number of transactions and increase the amount of capital gradually when it is needed.” —A cooperative leader in Bantul

  1. Financial product cross-selling is possible thanks to the network of cooperative members.

The provider could promote and sell financial products, such as savings and insurance, to the group members through the network and members of cooperatives. For example, in Karawang, a top-rated product is savings for children that target cooperative members who enroll their children into PAUD (early childhood education center). In Tangerang, intensive socialization and promotion led to a new batch of customers for the employee social security insurance (BPJS Ketenagakerjaan). As the transaction and the customer base grows, agents can serve as referrals for their cooperative members who need microloan product (KUR – Kredit Usaha Rakyat) applications. Agents will receive an incentive for every successful loan application.

Way forward

Linking agent banking to women’s cooperatives helps them expand their capacity by building their trust and confidence in digital financial services. The women’s cooperative members can use their voice and show their agency in making financial decisions through banking services “closer home,” transacting in their reliable cooperative community. The concerted effort to deploy women as banking agents has helped bridge the rural gender divide in financial inclusion. Female banking agents can now serve more women in their locality, overcoming some of the social and cultural hindrances that prevent women from performing financial transactions.

Nevertheless, Women Digital Ambassadors need to build profitable and sustainable businesses urgently. In the days ahead, alongside mentoring and coaching for women to run the business well, providers should use gender-intentional approaches to design products and services suitable for women’s needs and context, especially in rural areas. This combination of practices can yield positive outcomes to achieve the target of 90% financial inclusion for Indonesian women by 2024.

Delivering tailored digital business training in rural Indonesia through Women Digital Ambassador: What we learned so far

Posted on by MSC

From a waste collector to the digital ambassador

 Qoyimah, a 61-year-old single mother, rides her old bicycle around Bantul and Central Yogyakarta eight hours a day to collect waste. She carries the valuable waste in two huge baskets attached to the back of her bicycle saddle. In the afternoon after her daily ride, Qoyimah starts sorting the waste based on the type and waits for her regular buyers to arrive, weigh, and make the purchase. A typical good sales day means she could earn up to IDR 100,000 (~USD 6.5).

As a family head and sole breadwinner, Qoyimah has relied on this waste collection business for a few decades now. She is a necessity-driven entrepreneur.

Photo 1. Qoyimah and her bicycle

While collecting waste is her main job, Qoyimah is also an active member of the village health cadre. Her roles include helping with healthcare for the elderly community, assisting village residents in accessing their G2P benefits from social assistance programs, and tutoring Quran-reading for children in her neighborhood.

As a member of the PEKKA Women Cooperative, Qoyimah decided to join the Women Digital Ambassador (WDA) program, despite her initial hesitation. She thought she was too old to take up “digital business.” However, after learning how this program covers other basic financial skills, she felt she needed to know more to manage her personal and business finances better.

Qoyimah is one of WDA’s graduates, and she conducted more than 15 socializations with other community members in her area. At every meeting, she invited around 7-10 people to attend a session where she shared the knowledge gained from the WDA training. Her favorite topics are financial planning and managing business and personal finance as she could give examples of how she has now separated her business and personal expenses.

Photo 2. WDA graduates from Karawang

Qoyimah’s story reinforced our understanding that not all entrepreneurs need the same support and treatment. Customized training helps her navigate her needs and interests on topics that she thinks are valuable for her business and personal capacity. A key question here is, how does an entrepreneurship programmer design an intervention that accurately answers the needs of women business owners in rural areas, increases their business resilience, and helps them thrive in the era of digitalization?

Training and onboarding

 The WDA program works to enhance low-income women’s quality, uptake, and usage of digital financial services in rural areas. It partners with women cooperatives under the PEKKA Foundation to use the network of women’s groups for training on digital entrepreneurship skills and reskilling other women in the community.

After almost 10 months of the intervention, MSC wrapped up the training and conducted four graduation ceremonies for  women in four locations: Bantul, Batang, Karawang, and Tangerang regencies. The participants trained in the following modules in four days.

A few months of observation post-training revealed several insights for women entrepreneurs in rural areas:

  1. Starting from the easiest entry point is crucial to improve digital skills

The digitalization of MSMEs comes with many layers. For grassroots women entrepreneurs targeting the local market, using already familiar digital commerce platforms, such as social media apps like Facebook and WhatsApp, gives the easiest entry to adopt digital marketing.

Photo 3. Product photography session, participants learned how to capture a good-quality photo

E-commerce platforms have flourished exponentially in Indonesia. But, an information asymmetry persists regarding how to utilize the features to meet the different needs of entrepreneurs. For WDAs, purchasing from e-commerce platforms is a mundane activity. However, selling on e-commerce is a major leap from their usual business activity.

Another interesting observation showed that promoting and selling through WhatsApp and Facebook are less intimidating for them. Qoyimah has no urgency to have an online shop for her business. Still, she can use the Google My Business feature to expose her waste sorting facility to the public, attracting new buyers and sellers.

2. Training is more effective with hands-on practice and using relevant products as examples

The learning process becomes more effective when the WDAs put the module into practice and use the various tools, suggestions, products, and services mentioned. To make it more effective, we aligned topics around basic financial literacy to the BRILink products currently available at their cooperatives.

For example, in the sessions on managing business and personal finance and financial planning, we introduced different savings products that cater to their needs, such as haj, education, and pension. We also highlighted the importance of being registered in the BPJS Kesehatan (National Universal Healthcare System) and BPJS Ketenagakerjaan (National Social Security for Employment) to provide an example of affordable insurance products, where an agent can become a payment point for the monthly premium.

These first two lessons echo the importance of the Financial Services Space framework, which highlights the importance of three variables: volume/frequency of transactions, convenience of access and usage, and influence/motivation of the user.

3. The content and training delivery method highly influenced WDAs’ knowledge absorption and acceptance levels

Usually, online training is the last option for women business owners in villages with unreliable internet connections and unsupportive devices. In contrast, a mix of in-person training with hands-on experiments works better for this segment.

During the needs assessment, we gathered experience and insights from the past online training the WDAs received. Many cited that online training was more convenient, especially during the pandemic, but it comes with hindrances. Besides technical problems, they often faced many distractions. Moreover, when they perform a technology-related task, such as navigating on certain apps on their smartphone, they feel the need for in-person guidance rather than following instructions through the small screen of their cell phones.

4. Mentoring and peer learning ensure the learning cycle continues after the training period ends

We tried to balance the learning process by taking four classroom sessions in two weeks. We also created a monitored WhatsApp group for WDAs to connect with fellow learners and trainers at any time to exchange information, ask follow-up questions, and give simple homework and experiments to practice their skills. This group will be monitored closely for up to six months after the training but maintained within an unlimited time as a discussion platform for the women ambassadors.

We also observed that this forum is an excellent platform for WDAs to stay engaged in a lively conversation about different topics, such as the latest phishing scam method, types of fraud, and data breaching. Moreover, the forum also accommodates business-related topics, such as selling or promoting products and updating the number of the knowledge-sharing session they have conducted as part of their Digital Ambassador duties.

  1. Knowledge sharing helps the digital ambassadors improve their technical and interpersonal skills—strengthening their voice and agency

As part of their Digital Ambassador duties, the women spread the knowledge they received from the training to the community in their surroundings. Through this exercise, they gained the agency to set up meetings within their community network to ensure that the takeaways from the training reach a bigger audience. The WDAs, who were part of active cadres in many community-based organizations, managed to bring together members of the Family Welfare Movement (PKK), health cadres, Conditional Cash Transfer Program (PKH) recipients, Koranreading gatherings (pengajian), and many more.

Photo 4. A WDA conducted socialization on savings and financial planning for parents at an early childhood education center (PAUD)

“Some time ago, I spoke about the importance of hygienic packaging for food products as part of the marketing strategy. I shared the knowledge in one meeting among the health cadres—many of them also business owners—in my village. The topic matched well with that community’s needs. That is how I usually do the socialization.”—Qoyimah

Photo 5. Three cooperatives are now linked with BRILink’s banking agent system

Once the cooperative members and WDAs can access digital financial services, service providers can cross-sell to cooperative members and WDAs.

Moving forward

Training may improve skills, such as adopting business practices, but it does not always translate into improved business outcomes.A likely reason for these heterogenous findings is that different entrepreneurs face different sets of constraints, depending on their needs, experience level, personal characteristics, grits, and business models for both growth-oriented and necessity-oriented entrepreneurs. Regardless of background, character, or motivation, each enterprise has an equal right to grow. In this case, as enablers, we must carefully see the dynamic and develop tailored solutions for women entrepreneurs in rural settings.

Read the next part of this blog, where we deep dive into the impact of linking women cooperatives, WDAs, and agent banking and how that practice comes with unique challenges, unlike the usual agent model.

DEBIT: Unpacking women’s choice of financial channels

Posted on by MSC

The pace of digitalization around the world accelerated significantly after COVID-19. Even those reluctant to try technology were compelled to use digital platforms for day-to-day transactions. People’s use of mobile phones to transfer money picked up across income strata.

After the pandemic, about 40% of adults in developing economies barring China, made their very first digital merchant payment using a card, phone, or the internet. Similarly, more than one-third of adults in developing economies had their initial experience of paying a utility bill directly from an account after the pandemic started.

Our research suggests that women, especially those from the low- and moderate-income segment, moved to use mobile phones for financial transactions. In the new normal, multiple channels have opened, allowing people to conduct financial transactions as they please.

At MSC, we sought to understand how low- and moderate-income women choose a channel for financial transactions. This led us to follow women’s customer journeys across various geographies and distill crucial factors that determine their choice of channel. We used MSC’s DEBIT framework, rooted in behavioral science, which uses a gender lens to decode this choice. Please see more of our flagship work in this area here.

The DEBIT framework provides evidence of, for instance, how women’s perception of a particular channel and the tendencies for loss aversion make them stick to tried and tested channels. It identifies factors that influence women’s choices and helps compute comparative scores for each channel of each individual. Comparing the DEBIT scores helps us identify actions that stakeholders, such as governments and financial service providers can undertake to help women access a broader range of channels.

The DEBIT framework can be unpacked as:

Diffidence: the extent to which a woman feels hesitant to use the channel based on her perception of its relevance, complexity, and her treatment at the channel

Education: the cognitive burden of new learning on how to transact at a new channel

Bias: the extent to which social and gender norms reduce female users’ ability, autonomy, and mobility to transact independently at each channel

Investment: the economic cost incurred in reaching the channel and transacting, including the opportunity cost of her time

Trust: the function of perceived fear of transacting at the channel; a perception

of possible loss of money, control, respect, and privacy, which affects their trust to test or use the channel repeatedly

These drivers of debit are complex and interrelated.

DEBIT stands literally and metaphorically for everything people perceive to lose when they choose a channel. The choice is primarily based on loss aversion. DEBIT computes the perceived loss and shows that the user will choose the channel with the least cost.

The process to compute the DEBIT value for a channel:

  • We compute the rating or value of each DEBIT factor for a channel by taking the average rating of multiple indicators representing the factor, on a Likert scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the maximum.
  • The channel’s polygon is drawn using the individual rating computed for each DEBIT factor.

The overall area of the polygon for a channel represents that channel’s perceived loss (DEBIT value).

The customer considers the channels with the lowest perceived loss the most rational choice and adopts it.

Here is an example from our DEBIT Kenya research for a proxy M-PESA user. The graph captures higher scores for M-PESA, which means that the perceived loss of using M-PESA is higher among these women. They are yet to transition to M-PESA due to a lack of personal ID.

We developed DEBIT values for women across India and Kenya for channels, such as bank branches, ATMs, mobile banking, women collectives (SHG, ROSCA, ASCA, SACC), and cash. DEBIT helps us understand that women choose the channel to transact based on several factors beyond just the economic cost involved. Women in low-income communities make complex choices beyond what “seems rational” to everyone. These choices reflect their complicated daily lives as they deal with work and bear the disproportionate burden of care while managing their financial lives.

Read MSC’s reports from India and Kenya for the whole story.

Gender equity— celebrating stories, actions, and policies that advance everyday equity

Posted on by Deepesh Singh

Closing the digital gender divide: What’s next for the digital economy?

Posted on by MSC

Digital transformation has become today’s buzzword, and a focus of most countries —and Indonesia is no exception. Although the digital revolution promises to improve social and economic outcomes for women, it also comes with the risk of perpetuating patterns of gender inequality.

This year, Indonesia’s Digital Literacy Index 2021 is at 3.49, or close to a moderate stage. However, when we assessed a sample of 10,000 respondents in terms of gender, 55% of male respondents had a higher digital score above the national average. In contrast, the proportion of female respondents was only 45%.

The digital journey for women is not seamless. Several barriers keep women and girls offline, such as expensive mobile devices and data packages, lower digital skills, and restrictive social norms.

A report from the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) in 32 lower-middle-income countries reports that countries have missed out on USD 1 trillion in GDP due to women’s exclusion from the digital world. Thus, closing the digital gender gap is not just a moral cause; it is an economically crucial opportunity for women to participate in the economy.

In Indonesia, women own 61% of MSMEs. Yet only 17% of them are present on the e-commerce platforms. The effects of the pandemic urged MSMEs to access markets using digital technology to help the nation’s economy revive and grow. MSMEs must therefore seek to integrate with the digital ecosystem to survive and thrive. However, connecting MSMEs to the digital ecosystem is notoriously complex. For women, the challenges intensify.

Women experience systemic gaps, while discriminatory practices prevent women-led MSMEs from social and economic participation, and from financial and digital inclusion. Women cannot safely own or access essential digital services, skills, and resources as a fundamental right, which discourages women-led MSMEs from competing digitally in the marketplace. Additionally, they struggle to enter the digital ecosystem due to other factors, such as a lack of gender-responsive digital infrastructure, inadequate market access, and limited control and ownership of productive digital skills and assets.

What key actions can support the effort to close the digital gender gap in Indonesia?

First, the flagship National Strategy of Women’s Financial Inclusion, which targets around 83 million women, can serve as a strategic entry point. However, it must be implemented widely and re-evaluated to target the right audience, connect women to digital financial services, and create an enabling environment for women-led MSMEs.

Second, clearly stating the figures in the Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting (GRPB) should be mainstreamed to all line ministries and assessed regularly by the Ministry of Development Planning, the Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Home Affairs to maintain implementation quality at national and regional levels.

Third, the government can provide a support system to empower more women in STEM and ICT through affordable access and consistent policies in partnership with stakeholders. A study by ILO across the ASEAN region reveals women’s participation in computer programming, consultancy, and related activities in Indonesia stands at only 21%.

Fourth, enhancing easy and safe access to digital skills through gender-responsive entrepreneurship training and program can help the women-led MSMEs compete in the fierce digital marketplace.

Most recommendations above were discussed in detail at the G20 Ministerial Conference on Women’s Empowerment (MCWE) in Bali last August 2022. The G20 country members highlighted the need for collaboration between economies to close the digital gender gap. Participants agreed that member countries should open more opportunities for women to participate in STEM and digital sectors and build their digital resilience.

The Conference agreed that women’s participation in the digital economy needs serious attention, considering the enormous cost of digital exclusion to the economy. As the host of this year’s presidency, Indonesia must now urgently push the women’s empowerment and gender mainstreaming agendas.

Besides, the Women20 and G20 Empower Initiative members also highlighted the urgency of enabling women and girls’ skills in digital technology and scaling up the foundation to support women-owned businesses through inclusive ICT and economic recovery policies and programs.

Yet, the outputs of the G20 MCWE 2022 to the G20 Leaders leaves stakeholders, such as the Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection, think tanks, academia, and the private sector, with much to advocate for. Only through such advocacy can gender issues be mainstreamed and women be empowered to enjoy unrestricted access to the digital economy. Because a digital economy that does not include women adequately cannot scale to reach its full capacity.

Climate change and river erosion—what can we learn from the past?

Posted on by MSC

Chars and river erosion

The mighty Padma River finally washed away the zamindar bari (estate owner’s mansion) of Madbor Char in 1993. It had been a close call in 1935, when the river changed course and the mansion was flooded. Similarly, the river had threatened to engulf Madbor Char at the turn of the 20th century, around 1898. The family and those around them had lived for generations with the threat of losing their land.

Chars are riverine sand bars of two types: attached chars and island chars (Roy et al., 2015). Madbor Char is, or was, an attached char linked to the mainland under normal river flow conditions. However, as Ahmed Zoheeer, et al., 2021 note, “during the dry seasons, attached chars can be accessed without crossing a river channel. During the floods, many attached floods become island chars.”

 

Three of Asia’s largest rivers, the Ganges-Padma, the Brahmaputra-Jamuna, and the Meghna flow through Bangladesh. These rivers carry 1.2 trillion cubic meters of water and in excess of 1 billion tons of sediment every year from the catchment area outside the country (BWDB 2011). As a result, due to their drainage capacity, the rivers change course frequently, creating sedimentation-rich, fertile chars (Niamul Naser, 2020). Madbor Char is in the Faridpur district in the Lower Ganges River Floodplain agroecological zone (AEZ). The AEZ is particularly prone to river erosion. By way of example, the Padma eroded 66 villages in Charbhadrasan Upazila, a small subdistrict in Faridpur, between 1988 and 2013 (Biddut Ghosh, 2022).

So perhaps it was no surprise that in 1993, river erosion prevailed, and the waters of the Padma engorged my brother-in-law’s country home and many of the surrounding fields. The process happened slowly, painfully, and inexorably over three months between August and October until the entire edifice was lost forever. Many poorer families living in Madbor Char were rendered landless and destitute.

This reminds us that while we can safely assume that climate change is exacerbating and accelerating rapid-onset events in the Gangetic delta, these forces have been inherent in the geography for millennia.

The consequences

The impact on vulnerable families is devastating. Sovacool & Linnér, (2015) tell of “Abul Kalam, who used to be a professional fisher, is now a rickshaw puller living with his family of eight in a temporary thatched shack next to the canal of a fishery ghat (landing center for boats).” He migrated to Chittagong city in 2008 after he lost three acres of land due to erosion brought about by the Meghna. He says, “I shifted house three times due to erosion. My family members lived on other land after losing assets. Erosion changes everything; our home, livelihood and the society as well. River erosion is the curse for us”.

This photo essay highlights the process and experience of affected families—many of whom are forced to migrate to cities in quest of work.

And when families are made destitute, women bear much of the burden. As Tanzina Dilshada et al., (2017) note, “when a family becomes poor it affects women in those families in many ways. If there is food shortage, women take less food, which affects their health. It affects girls’ education and increases threat of early marriage, and encourages the dowry system.”

Lessons

So what can we learn from how families have responded to river erosion of land and livelihoods?

First, the people of Bangladesh recognize the impacts of climate change and are responding to them. As Table 1 below shows, the impacts are more multi-dimensional than just increased river erosion. More instances of extreme weather events due to climate change mean that both flooding and summer droughts have increased alongside increased river erosion. Indeed, these extremes are amplifying the erosion processes.

Second, climate change is slowly and inexorably increasing the vulnerability of poorer households and forcing them to adapt. Alam et al. (2017) note that all households reported loss of land and income from agriculture due to the loss of land, crops, and yield. Smallholder farmers and landless households reported a significant reduction in their ability to save and access both formal and informal credit. Alam et al. (2017) also identified 15 adaptation strategies based on affected people’s long-term knowledge and perceptions of climate change (see Table 2). They note two types of adaptation—individual-level based on people’s own experience and knowledge and planned adaptation supported by the government and NGOs.

“The study revealed that despite the difficulties of riverbank erosion and other climate change issues, all of the resource-poor households were attempting to sustain and to improve their livelihood through a range of adaptation strategies” Alam et al., (2017).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the adaptation strategies vary according to the affluence or farm size of the respondents. Almost all farmers had changed both the crops and varieties of rice they plant and the times they plant them to try to manage the changing weather patterns. Many small and landless farmers have diversified into livestock and poultry rearing, often under the guidance of the government or NGOs. And more than half of these poorer households have members who have migrated to cities to earn additional income.

River erosion and the delta dynamics also create new chars, and thus opportunities to live on and farm the rich soil of these sandbars. However, the more affluent households in the area often seize the most viable and least marginal of these opportunities.

Bryant and Bailey (1997: 28–29) write that political ecologists generally accept the idea that the “costs and benefits associated with environmental change are for the most part distributed among actors unequally,” which serves to reinforce, or at times reduce, existing social and economic inequity. Building on this observation, Benjamin K Sovacool, (2017) highlights how elites can encroach upon and enclose the emergent chars to capture and farm them to the exclusion of poorer and thus weaker people. The impacts of climate change amplify poverty.

My brother-in-law’s family migrated to Dhaka and rebuilt relatively comfortable lives in the capital. The Padma River had created another char a few miles from where Madbor Char once stood. More affluent and influential families in the area soon enclosed and occupied the new char, to the exclusion of the poorer ones. Yet many of the vulnerable families from Madbor Char were left landless, destitute, and struggling to rebuild their lives from those fateful months in 1993.