Melted ice caps, habitat loss, encroaching seas, violent storms, crop failure, hunger, death — the list of global warming’s ill effects is long. Yet for some, climate change has been a windfall. In Bangladesh, businesses in sectors like the garment trade are profiting from the influx of poor women into urban areas, driven off their land by climate change.

Masses of women have flocked to the city because of the scarcity of job opportunities for them in rural villages. But as my visit to the slums of Dhaka in late 2014 and early 2015 revealed, many are also being expelled by severe weather and forced into exploitative work arrangements in the capital’s ready-made garment (RMG) industry.

Many women recounted the financial and personal hardships they faced in their village in the wake of floods, droughts, storms, and erosion. They sought employment in urban garment factories in an attempt to detach their income and food supply from increasingly destructive weather patterns.