Flexibility Fixes Land Acquisition, Payment Concerns in Bangladesh

The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), a geographically isolated area in Bangladesh, experienced severe poverty due to low access to basic services, ethnic confrontations, and a long-running insurgency. Its infrastructures were damaged, its natural resources were depleted, and incomes were 40% lower than the national average. The area, with a rapidly increasing population, badly needed help.

The Second CHT Rural Development Project aimed to address the lack of infrastructure and low incomes in the area. However, for the project to progress, it needed to overcome one critical issue—land acquisition—which is a very sensitive issue for CHT residents.

Much of the land in CHT is under customary landownership. Since communal land titles were not recognized by national law, the project’s concern was that indigenous CHT people might not get paid during land acquisition through conventional government process. Fortunately, the government of Bangladesh recognized this and facilitated the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) efforts to rectify the situation.  

This article details how innovative methods such as trust and consensus-building, flexibility, and use of traditional hierarchy facilitated the first successful application of consensus-based compensation under ADB’s Safeguard Policy Statement.