Conversations in Conflict Studies: Deferred Water Injustice (DWI)

Despite sitting within the world’s largest river delta, Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, has become increasingly dependent on groundwater as rapid urbanization and severe surface-water pollution have transformed the city’s waterscape. While policy seeks to reduce this dependence through more sustainable alternatives, Dhaka’s expanding peri-urban frontier, which is also an industrial belt, still relies almost entirely on privately extracted groundwater.

Drawing on archival research and fieldwork across peri-urban settlements, Avia Nahreen examines households’ dependence on pumps that draw from aquifers government agencies monitor sparsely. She terms the water injustices arising from this arrangement “deferred water injustice”: the production of present-day water abundance by displacing its ecological and social costs into the future, while selective measurement keeps those costs politically invisible.

Avia Nahreen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Geography and the Environment Department. Her research examines urban water politics, environmental injustice and the layered experiences of water infrastructure in Dhaka. She explores groundwater dependence, colonial water legacies and everyday struggles and possibilities surrounding water access.

Lunch will be provided.