Climate change adaptation (CCA) evolved in the global policy framework in the early 1990s. However, it began to flourish about a decade later through a subsequent development of institutions, policies and supporting financial mechanisms. Various adaptation approaches and development practices have been evolving over the last couple of decades through a process of scrutiny, debates, and critiques. One such recent approach is called conflict-sensitive adaptation, which encompasses concepts to understand potential conflict-inflicting elements and peacebuilding aspects of adaptation interventions. This paper examines 35 peer-reviewed research articles that have analysed field data with the notion of conceptualising conflict-sensitive CCA initiatives. Emerging key results were presented and discussed in different academic forums to stimulate peer reflections and debates. We found that the understanding of conflict-sensitive adaptation has its universality in engaging with diverse stakeholders. However, practicalities were different in the cases of the global north and the global south. In the global south, there is a concentration of research in areas of pre-existing conflict in Africa and Asia, where climate change links are often assumed from IPCC reports in order to compensate for the unavailability of field data. However, from the perspective of adaptation politics and governance, there is a concerted urge for the emancipatory participation of local and marginalised populations. We argue for a need to pretest adaptation projects through a conflict lens. Decolonising the adaptation and understanding of local geography is critical in such planning.

Drawing on ethnography, this paper conceptualizes invisible mobilities by exploring the linkages between mobility, invisibility and hotel and residence based sex work in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Since both are illegal in Bangladesh, hotel and residence based sex workers (HRSWs) become targets of the different laws and sex work related social stigma. We show, in this paper, how invisible mobilities is used to strategize and counter-enact against the existing exploitative gendered socio-political-legal regimes and practices involved in sex work. Invisible mobilities refers to the way HRSWs move in order to hide their occupation from society and the law. Invisibility is at the core of all these connections: It enables HRSWs to continue sex work and avoid exclusion from family and members of their communities. While making themselves invisible permits them to continue their daily ways to earn a living, it also reinforces the same social stigma they are constantly trying to avoid. In doing so, this paper reveals the political economy of sex work in the city and provides a new theoretical window to understand the connections between gender, mobility and the city, constructing a bridge between mobility and sex work studies literature.

Drawing on ethnography, this paper unravels the intricate relationship between survival tactics and legal status in the complex process of survival mobility in the ungoverned enclaves of India and Bangladesh. In doing so, I explicate the spaces of survival of the undocumented enclave dwellers. The survival mobility in the enclave shows how states’ construction of legal immobility in effect compels illegal mobility. Besides, enclave dwellers’ survival mobility neither symbolises liberty nor characterises resistance. Rather, it represents a form of vulnerability, concern and unavoidable necessity. These practices show a nuanced understanding of the politics of mobility need to consider legality and tactics as two very essential factors for assessing the movement of individuals.

Plastic, an offer of modernity, has become one of the essential parts of our everyday life. However, it is presenting a massive threat in altered forms, to our health and environment. Plastic does not only pollute the surface environment, freshwater, and marine ecosystems, but toxic elements released from plastics also percolate down the surface and contaminate groundwater, which we often use as ‘safe’ drinking water. This probable future risk is deeply rooted in the entire governance infrastructure of plastic waste which could potentially lead to contamination of groundwater. Thus, a state-sponsored ‘safe drinking water’ initiative could contrarily produce a ‘risk society’. A recent study finds 81% of tap water samples collected worldwide contained plastic pollutants, which means that annually we may be ingesting between 3000 and 4000 microparticles of plastic from tap water. Based on review, ethnographic observations and interviews, and lived experience in a plastic-wrapped city (Dhaka), this paper sheds light on the complex interface of plastic, water, and public health, on the relevance of Beck’s ‘risk society’ to understand this complexity, and on replicating the idea of ‘risk society’ in the case of Bangladesh. Through understanding the plastic–groundwater–waste management nexus, this paper highlights and advocates for a new strategy of plastic governance in modern states.