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What are the political imaginaries contained within representations of urban climate futures? What silent but corollary rural dispossessions accompany them? I investigate these questions through the experience of migrants from rural coastal Bangladesh to peri-urban Kolkata. The threats posed to their villages by a variety of ecological disruptions (both loosely and intimately linked with climate change) drive their migration in search of new livelihoods. Their experiences suggest that the demise of rural futures is entangled with the celebration of urban climate futures. However, social movements in this region resisting agrarian dispossession point to alternative political imaginaries that resist teleologies of urbanization at the expense of agrarian livelihoods. Current work in both agrarian studies and urban studies theorizes these linked dynamics of rural–urban transition, seeking to understand them in relation to broader political economies. I bring these debates into conversation with one another to highlight the importance of attention to counter-hegemonic agrarian political imaginaries, particularly in the face of predictions of the death of the peasantry in a climate-changed world. It won't be possible to identify or pursue just climate futures without them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the shaping of Bangladesh's southern coastal region, often framed as the most climate vulnerable place in the world, as a zone of climate crisis. As rising waters threaten communities inhabiting the low‐lying coastal islands scattered across the deltaic plain, many within the government and donor community have identified shrimp aquaculture as a principal adaptation strategy. Shrimp aquaculture is integral to the dynamics of what I call anticipatory ruination, a discursive and material process of social and ecological destruction in anticipation of real or perceived threats. I elaborate anticipatory ruination as a process that both responds to and produces Bangladesh's climate crisis. I use this concept to explore not only the dynamics taking place in Bangladesh's delta region, but also the ways in which climate crisis is constituted more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategies for climate change adaptation are contingent on normative analyses of ideal development outcomes and possible futures. Competing visions for the future thus result in adaptation programmes that benefit some while disadvantaging others. In coastal Bangladesh, shrimp aquaculture provides an example of one such adaptation strategy with contested unequal outcomes. Focusing on the impacts of adaptation on the poorest and most vulnerable reduces the risk of negative impacts on the most structural disadvantaged. Attention to power imbalances, as opposed to technical solutions, can help ensure more equitable outcomes of adaptation measures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]