Early examples of planned relocation in Odisha saved lives but left livelihoods fragile, increased onward migration and curtailed access to common resources, underscoring the need for inclusive, livelihood-centred climate mobility policies.

Between 1999 and 2016, Odisha lost about 154 km—nearly 28 %—of its 485 km coastline to sea-water ingression(NCCR, 2018). Odisha’s planned relocation, among the earliest to take place in India, unfolded through two major initiatives.[1] Under the 2006 Odisha Resettlement & Rehabilitation Policy (ORRP) about 600 families from the severely eroded village of Satabhaya in Kendrapara were moved to Bagapatia (beginning in 2017) and provided with homestead land, housing and basic services. Similarly, after Cyclone Phailin in 2013, the World Bank-supported Odisha Disaster Recovery Project (ODRP) resettled around 700 households from Podempeta to New Podempeta in Ganjam district.

While both communities were relocated with housing and compensation, their post-relocation experiences diverged in important ways. Podempeta households, traditionally marine fishers without agricultural land, continued to face water scarcity and restrictions on fishing, though they benefitted from stronger participation in planning and decision-making. Satabhaya households, primarily farmers, struggle with waterlogging, resource constraints, and fragile livelihoods, reflecting limited consultation and weaker institutional support during relocation. The contrast highlights that sustainable outcomes depend not only on physical safety but also on enabling conditions such as livelihood opportunities, access to common property resources, inclusive and gender-sensitive planning, and sustained stakeholder engagement.

Migration as adaptation

International policy frameworks and development agencies increasingly frame migration as an adaptation strategy under the concept of “migration with dignity.”  This framing emphasises mobility as a means of diversifying risks and sustaining livelihoods in the face of climate stress.[2] The Odisha experience highlights the challenges of this approach. After resettlement, Satabhaya households were not compensated with agricultural land and thus lost their farming-based livelihoods. Likewise, Podempeta households were cut off from their traditional dependence on marine fishing. With no concrete livelihood support plan in place, many households have turned to migration as a coping strategy rather than a dignified choice. Men now migrate seasonally or permanently to states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu for work in fishing or construction. Although migration was among the livelihood strategies used previously, its frequency and duration have increased significantly since relocation, reflecting the limited options available at the new sites.

For these households, migration is less a pre-emptive adaptation choice than a distress-driven response to the absence of viable local livelihoods. The economic benefits of the resulting remittances are often outweighed by the social and emotional costs of family separation, while the absence of male labour further increases women’s household burdens, as discussed below. Children are often required to contribute more to household labour, reducing school attendance. These trade-offs highlight that while migration may offer short-term relief, it can simultaneously erode long-term resilience.

Moreover, migration from Odisha’s relocated villages is highly precarious. Our interviews with the local community find that migrants are often engaged in low-paid and insecure labour, lacking social protection and labour rights. This exposes them to a variety of risks, including exploitation and poor living conditions. Far from guaranteeing adaptation, such migration often compounds losses and damages by adding layers of economic and non-economic vulnerability. The Odisha case thus illustrates the limitations of treating migration as a straightforward adaptation pathway. While mobility may be unavoidable given the loss of local livelihoods, its outcomes are mediated by social inequalities and weak institutional support.

Community engagement

While relocation policies often prioritise physical safety through the provision of land and housing, their long-term sustainability depends heavily on whether communities are meaningfully engaged in planning, site selection and decision-making processes. In the context of Odisha, the contrasting experiences of Satabhaya and Podempeta provide valuable insights into how governance arrangements shape relocation outcomes.

In Satabhaya, the resettlement process was largely state-led, through the Odisha Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policy (ORRP). Communities were offered housing and land in Bagapatia, but had limited influence over the choice of the relocation site. As a result, they were resettled on low-lying, swampy land prone to waterlogging, which has created new risks of flooding and disease. Poor drainage has led to stagnant water around homes and schools, resulting in children missing up to a month of school each year due to these unhygienic conditions and the associated diseases.

One of our interviewees, Smita from Bagapatia, explained: “During the rainy season, our roads remain waterlogged for months, turning into breeding grounds for mosquitoes, increasing the frequency of outbreaks of fever and other illnesses among children . As a result, children often miss up to two months of classes each year. After resettlement, we realised how crucial proper drainage and health facilities are for our community.”.”

Although a village committee was nominally consulted, decision-making power rested largely with government authorities, resulting in a mismatch between community priorities and the chosen site. These governance shortcomings have translated directly into fragile livelihood conditions, where households struggle not only with the loss of agricultural land but also with inadequate infrastructure.

By contrast, the Podempeta relocation, undertaken under the World Bank-supported Odisha Disaster Recovery Project (ODRP), although not perfect, demonstrates how greater community involvement can improve outcomes. Here, the marine fishing community was offered multiple options and, in many cases, was able to purchase or select lands they preferred, which offered good conditions for housing and infrastructure. Community members actively participated in planning the layout of the new settlement, including roads and water tanks. This participatory approach fostered a greater sense of ownership over the relocation process and produced relatively higher satisfaction with housing and infrastructure compared to Satabhaya. However, despite these governance improvements, challenges remain: there has been very little follow-up work after relocation to improve the conditions of the villagers in terms of infrastructure and livelihood. For example, clean drinking water has been an issue because the water available in the area is quite saline due to proximity to the sea.

One young man, who had returned from years of fishing work in Kerala that left him with chronic back problems and unable to continue such labour, expressed his frustration: “Every year, many researchers, government officials, and people from international organisations come here and ask us questions. But they go back, and our voices never reach the authorities.”

The role of gender

The impact of planned relocation differs according to gender in ways that shape outcomes. In the case of Satabhaya, gendered vulnerabilities are especially pronounced. With many men migrating to nearby towns and other states in search of work after relocation, women often represent the most immobile group, left behind to manage households under increasingly constrained conditions. So much so that for the group interviews in the villages, only a few men were available to join the discussion.

In Bagapatia, loss of access to agricultural land and forest-based resources has meant that women – who once contributed through farming, fishing, honey collection and vegetable cultivation – now struggle to secure daily food needs, relying heavily on purchased goods and small menial jobs. While NGOs and civil society groups have introduced small-scale livelihood programmes, such as poultry and goat-rearing, these interventions have proved unsustainable and insufficient to replace lost incomes. While women interviewed in our community were prepared to start new livelihood practices, there is simply not enough support to break the cycle of poverty and make livelihoods sustainable.

At best, the current provisions are ad hoc quick fixes, rather than long-term solutions; women still mostly rely on income from male members of the family who have migrated. These gendered impacts are compounded by the unequal distribution and use of remittances. Remittances are often controlled by male household members and prioritized for debt repayment or household assets rather than for women’s needs or productive activities, leaving women with limited decision-making power or financial autonomy. Consequently, remittances rarely compensate for non-economic losses such as declining health, weakened social networks, and disrupted cultural life.

In addition, the burden of unpaid care work has intensified in the relocated villages, not because women’s roles have changed, but because the conditions under which they perform them have worsened. In the resettlement sites, poor infrastructure, unreliable water supply, and limited access to health and childcare services have increased the time and effort required for everyday tasks. For example, in Bagapatia’s low-lying environment, recurring waterlogging not only exposes families to disease but also forces women to spend additional hours securing clean water, maintaining sanitation, and caring for sick family members. Thus, relocation has magnified pre-existing gendered responsibilities by placing them in a more resource-scarce and physically demanding environment.

By contrast, in Podempeta, where community engagement in relocation planning was stronger, women had comparatively greater opportunities to participate in decisions about housing and infrastructure. Nevertheless, their livelihoods remain constrained by restrictions on marine fishing due to the presence of a conservation area protecting turtles, as well as by persistent water scarcity. Here too, male out-migration for work has left women with heavier responsibilities and limited external support. Before resettlement, dried fish trading was a thriving, women-led livelihood, anchored in a longstanding tradition. Despite the community’s proximity to the Humma dried-fish market – one of Odisha’s largest – this source of income has declined sharply since relocation, constrained by rising household care burdens, seasonal access to the sea and limited capital to make the business viable for women. Across both sites, therefore, relocation has reinforced traditional gender divisions of labour while curtailing women’s access to sustainable livelihoods.

Access to common property resources

Access to common property resources (CPRs) such as forests, grazing lands, fisheries and water bodies is central to the livelihoods of rural communities, especially those facing climate stress. In the context of climate-induced relocation, however, CPRs are often overlooked, with compensation and resettlement packages prioritising housing and basic infrastructure rather than restoring access to shared natural resources. [3] This omission can significantly undermine the long-term sustainability of relocated communities, as CPRs frequently serve as both safety nets during crises and as key sources of supplementary income and food security. The Odisha relocation experience demonstrates how the loss of CPRs reshaped livelihood trajectories and exacerbated vulnerability in both Satabhaya and Podempeta.

For the Satabhaya community, relocation to Bagapatia resulted in a near-total loss of access to forest-based resources. Before relocation, households depended heavily on honey collection, firewood and other forest products to diversify incomes and meet subsistence needs. After resettlement, however, forest access was curtailed due to conservation restrictions and fears of wildlife attacks This loss has been compounded by the absence of agricultural land in the rehabilitation package, leaving households dependent on food purchases in an area where wages and opportunities are scarce. The inability to draw on CPRs has thus converted once self-reliant households into cash-dependent consumers, increasing their vulnerability to both market shocks and climatic stresses.

The Podempeta community illustrates a different but equally constraining CPR dynamic. As a marine fishing community, Podempeta households traditionally relied on access to the sea for both food and income. Post-relocation, however, their dependence on marine resources has been disrupted by conservation regulations. The nearby coast, designated as a critical olive ridley turtle nesting ground, is closed to fishing activities for up to eight months each year. While these conservation measures serve important ecological goals, they have inadvertently stripped households of their primary livelihood source without offering viable alternatives. The meagre financial support provided by the government to compensate for the income loss is insufficient. Unlike in Satabhaya, where civil society organisations have introduced small-scale animal husbandry and poultry programmes, Podempeta residents face limited livelihood alternatives, and as a result, large-scale male out-migration has become the dominant coping strategy. The transition to new forms of employment entails significant social and economic costs, particularly when previous occupations—such as marine fishing—were deeply embedded as a way of life.

The loss of CPRs in both cases highlights how relocation interventions can unintentionally deepen livelihood fragility. Forests and fisheries are not merely economic assets but also cultural and social anchors, linked to identity, knowledge systems and community cohesion. Their loss constitutes both economic and non-economic forms of damage, reducing food sovereignty and eroding resilience. Importantly, these losses also reveal trade-offs between different policy priorities: disaster risk reduction through relocation, biodiversity conservation and community livelihood security. Without mechanisms to balance these competing goals, relocated communities are left with limited autonomy over their resource use and diminished adaptive capacity.

Key lessons

The Odisha experience shows that planned relocation can save lives but risks leaving livelihoods fragile unless it is embedded in inclusive and livelihood-centred policies. For this to happen, a number of approaches are needed. First, compensation must go beyond housing to secure equitable access to common property resources. Land-for-land compensation[4], livelihood integration into conservation programmes, and recognition of customary rights can transform restrictions into opportunities for income and ecological stewardship.

Second, migration should be addressed as part of adaptation policy. Recognising that some migration is inevitable as a coping strategy, protecting migrant workers’ rights in destination areas while reducing the vulnerabilities of those left behind –particularly women – is essential. Integrating migration into National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – which outline how countries will adapt to climate change in the medium- and long-term and set out their commitments on greenhouse gas emissions – applying intersectional and gender-responsive frameworks, can help shift mobility from distress to dignity.

Third, relocation governance must be understood as a continuous process. Transparent decision-making, sustained community engagement and accountability mechanisms are necessary, from site selection to livelihood planning. Avoiding token consultation and investing in long-term institutional capacity is key to building resilience.

Finally, gender equity must be central. Ensuring women’s participation in decision-making, equal access to land and resources, and targeted livelihood support, can prevent relocation from reinforcing existing inequalities. Only by embedding these principles can planned relocation move from short-term survival to long-term resilience.

 

Architesh Panda
Independent Researcher and consultant, India
architesh@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/architesh-panda-111bb815/

Sumanta Banerjee
Consultant, Odisha, India
sumantabanerjee005@gmail.com

The authors sincerely thank the participants from both villages for their time and valuable discussions. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the positions of any affiliated organisations.

 

[1] Architesh Panda (2020) Climate Change, Displacement, and Managed Retreat in Coastal India, Migration Policy Institute

[2] United Nations Network on Migration (2024) Summary of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the UN Network on Migration 30-31 January 2024 CICG, Geneva (hybrid)

[3] Piggott-McKellar A E, Pearson J, McNamara K E and Nunn PD (2020) ‘A livelihood analysis of resettlement outcomes: Lessons for climate-induced relocations’, Ambio Vol 49: 1474-89

[4] Land-for-land compensation refers to providing relocated households with cultivable or usable land of comparable quality to what was lost, including access to shared resources such as grazing areas, fishing grounds, and forests that sustain collective livelihoods.

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