Youth-led Indigenous research exposes systemic climate vulnerability in Chittagong Hill Tracts amid extractive governance
Original framing: “Indigenous youth research highlights climate stress in CHT” — bing news
Indigenous youth in the CHT articulate climate stress through a lens of territorial sovereignty, linking environmental degradation to the loss of ancestral lands and sacred sites. Their research methods—such as participatory mapping and oral histories—reveal how colonial land tenure systems disrupt traditional knowledge systems that once ensured ecological balance. However, these perspectives are often sidelined in favor of Western scientific frameworks that prioritize quantifiable metrics over relational worldviews.
The UNESCO-supported youth research in the Chittagong Hill Tracts reveals a climate crisis that is fundamentally a crisis of governance, where decades of militarized land grabs and plantation expansion have eroded Indigenous resilience.
This pattern mirrors global Indigenous struggles, from the Sami in Scandinavia to the Māori in Aotearoa, where state and corporate interests prioritize extraction over stewardship. The marginalization of Jumma youth’s knowledge—both in research and policy—exemplifies how neoliberal climate frameworks commodify Indigenous perspectives while ignoring structural violence. True solutions require land demilitarization, Indigenous-led agroecology, and legal empowerment for youth, but these demand confronting the Bangladeshi state’s settler colonial legacy and the complicity of international institutions like UNESCO. The trickster’s lens exposes how 'development' narratives invert reality, framing exploitation as progress, while Indigenous youth—like Anansi or Hermes—offer the tools to untangle these deceptions.