This multidisciplinary work analyses challenges to sustainable development amidst rapidly
changing climate in the world's largest delta - the Sundarbans. Empirical evidence unpacks
grounded vulnerabilities and reveals their temporal socio-economic impacts. A novel concept of
'everyday disasters' is proposed - supported by data and photographic evidence - that contests
institutional disaster definition. Then it uncovers how the geopolitics of ecological
governance and its hegemonic discourse dominate local policies which in turn fail to address
local socio-ecological concerns adaptation needs and development aspirations. Absence of local
vocabularies cognitive values and socio-cultural contexts along with spatially constricted
exclusionary top-down techno-science approaches further escalate knowledge-action gaps.
Deconstruction of multiscalar conflicts between the global rhetoric and transformative
postcolonial geographies offers an ethical Southern perspective of sustainability.
