Subaltern perspectives and agency in climate governance: insights from selected climatic hotspots in Bangladesh

This study examines how subaltern communities in selected climate hotspots of Bangladesh engage with climate governance. Drawing on qualitative data, it finds that subaltern groups—women, small-scale fishers, and landless households—encounter structural and epistemic barriers within elite-dominated governance systems. Despite these constraints, they exercise forms of constrained agency through coping practices, informal negotiation, and the use of local knowledge, which occasionally shape governance processes. Adaptive capacities are further differentiated by intersecting dimensions of gender, class, and geography. The study advances a shift from exclusion-centered analyses toward an understanding of constrained agency and the need for more inclusive climate governance.