Helping Bangladesh Become Resilient to Climate Change Threats

More than nearly any country in the world, Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to the steadily growing effects of climate change.

The South, Southwest, and Southeast coastal regions are increasingly susceptible to frequent and severe tropical cyclones, rising sea level and saline intrusion. The Northwest Barind Tract is prone to drought, while the Northeast freshwater wetland alternately faces delayed rainfall or early flooding. The Central floodplains experience flooding, flash floods, and river bank erosion, the Hill Tracts have landslides and Bangladesh’s urban areas are damaged by drainage congestion.

The Community Climate Change Project is one of a group of initiatives in Bangladesh fighting these mounting threats by focusing on communities hit hardest by weather extremes and by helping people living in them adapt and survive.

CCCP invests in improving infrastructure, adapting agricultural practices and locating innovative sources of income, helping Bangladeshis in the most sensitive areas strengthen the resilience of their homes, livelihoods, food and water security, health, and well-being. 

Stronger Resilience to Climate Change

With World Bank funding of $13 million since 2012, the Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation implements the CCCP through 41 competitively selected local NGOs. Those groups raise homes to prevent daily inundation, help residents find climate-adaptive alternative livelihoods, support harvesting and storing of safe freshwater, perform desalination in water-scarce villages and adapt agricultural practices to farm drought-resistant or flood-tolerant crops.

In the high-saline areas, where traditional agriculture fails, the project helps the community shift to salinity-tolerant mud crab cultivation. Because there is growing local and international demand for the mud crabs, farmers, many of whom are women, generate more income.

Also, as local communities adopt CCCP measures, they become more financially self-reliant and resilient to weather and climate extremes. 

Protecting the Most Vulnerable

Jahanara, who lives in Assasuni, Satkhira district, received support through CCCP to raise the plinth, or foundational base, of her house to protect it from flooding. “Previously saline water used to inundate our courtyard,” she says. “But after raising the plinth, water doesn’t enter our courtyard anymore, and we could now do vegetable gardening there. Also, because of the raised plinth, none of us, including our children, get sick anymore.”

Similarly, plinth raising was transformative for Mossammet Shelina of Dhushmara. “The plinths rescued us, our cattle and poultry,” Shelina said. “Flood waters could not even reach the courtyard of the raised ground.”

Jahanara and Shelina are among the 40,000 people receiving CCCP benefits. More than 400 vulnerable households get fresh drinking water from a pilot desalinization plant in Shyamnagar, and women have seen their income levels rise by an additional 1,500 taka per month from sales of saline-tolerant mud crabs.