Seventeen years after Cyclone Aila tore through Gabura, most families who survived it are still there. Drawing on nearly two decades of fieldwork, this piece asks why people stay when the land is disappearing, and what that means for Bangladesh's climate policy.

In the heart of Baratia village in Dumuria, a young boy named Dipu lives hemmed in by towering mounds of wet, suffocating riverbed clay.