The Destructive Work of Restoration: Fishing Communities Facing Territorialization in Turag River

Authors

Efadul Huq, Smith CollegeFollow
Mohammad Azaz, River & Delta Research Centre,

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-2024

Publication Title

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

Abstract

Urban river restoration efforts are growing worldwide. Along with restoring and conserving rivers, riverside land is slated for public recreation, property development, and infrastructure for adaptation to climate change. Riverine landscapes, embedded in larger watershed ecosystems and claimed by multiple communities, are sites of contested planning in contemporary cities. In this paper, we advance the scholarship on contestation over control and access of urban rivers and floodplains by analyzing the role of river restorative legislation and water-centered planning in managing Turag, an urban river in Bangladesh. While river degradation in urbanizing regions is often ascribed to lack of regulatory controls and enforcement, we argue that restorative legislation and interventions facilitate Turag River's ecocide by processes of territorialization. Territorialization refers to the co-constitutive dynamics of river restorative legislations and interventions as well as planned infrastructure and land use changes, which erase and displace river-based communities with reciprocal relations to the river. Riverine livelihoods and lifemaking, among fishing and farming communities in the case of Turag, are erased from planning and restoration practices, and are consequently expelled from the expanding city. Drawing on qualitative and counter-cartographic investigation of one severely polluted urban river in Dhaka, Bangladesh, we show how territorialization materializes through five co-constitutive dynamics involving environmental legislation, encroachment reporting, river demarcation, encroachment evictions, and wetland to land conversions. We draw out critical implications of how river restoration can be just and advance a riverine urbanism.

Keywords

Urban political ecology, environmental politics, urbanization, environmental justice

Volume

7

Issue

4

First Page

1526

Last Page

1554

DOI

10.1177/25148486241254922

Rights

© The Author(s) 2024

Comments

Archived as published.

Recommended Citation

Huq, Efadul and Azaz, Mohammad, "The Destructive Work of Restoration: Fishing Communities Facing Territorialization in Turag River" (2024). Environmental Science and Policy: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/env_facpubs/33