Introduction: Impacts of Climate Change on Bangladesh

Since the climate change debate began, experts have predicted that Bangladesh would be one of the most vulnerable countries to increased extreme weather events and sea level rise.   A rise in sea level above 1 metre, which could be reached within the next century would mean that Bangladesh could lose up to 15-18 percent of its land area. Thirty million people may become environmental refugees by 2050. For an overpopulated and land scarce country, these are alarming predictions.

Long before there was a global shift towards linking disaster management with climate change, Bangladesh actually started building the mechanism through the Comprehensive Disaster Management Propgramme (CDMP). A Climate Change Cell has been set up by the government to research and document changes and suggest ways for adaptation to climate change impacts, including changes in rainfall, drought, and sea level rise. 

Already there is evidence of unusual weather patterns bringing in changes during the planting and harvesting seasons such as early flowering in trees, unusual droughts and rainfall. While the above predictions represent a disastrous outcome for Bangladesh, they do need to be validated within the country context so that they become more specific in terms of impact within key sectors and on the ground.    This article reviews Bangladesh’s global best practice with disaster management which other countries can learn from as climate change exacerbates existing climate vulnerability.

Existing Climate Vulnerability in Bangladesh

Known as the largest floodplain in the world, Bangladesh is a low-lying deltaic country in South Asia. It drains the waters of three major river systems, which originate from the Himalayas — the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna, to the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean. With a limited land area of 144,000 sq km, Bangladesh is small for a population of 145 million people. More than 230 rivers and their tributaries intersect the country, making water a way of life for its people. It is very much tied to the culture, legends and heritage of the people of Bangladesh, while annual floods are part of its normal hydrological cycle, making the soil fertile. As a result, the country is always lush green and produces a bountiful harvest, owing to the efforts of farmers and the use of high yield varieties of crops. Bangladesh on the whole is self sufficient in food, but it has about 15 percent of the very poor relying on food aid due to lack of purchasing power.

Over the last decade, the country has been changing from a predominantly agrarian economy to an industrial and service economy. The private sector and remittances from expatriate Bangladeshi workers play a key role in the national economy, which is seeing a growth rate close to 7 percent. With its encouraging and proactive policy towards Foreign Direct Investments (FDI), Bangladesh has promoted the flow of foreign exchange into the country, which in turn is propelling the economy forward. As a result, the country is undergoing rapid urbanization and is projected to have mega cities in 15-25 years.

While water has supported life and contributed to productivity in Bangladesh, its excess has also contributed to recurrent natural disasters, giving the country the unfortunate distinction of being one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. Every year, floods occur in the country and these frequently turn into disasters, by overflowing their normal limits, as well as overstaying, thus causing immense damage, loss and suffering to the people. In this agro-based country, where about 70 percent of the people are involved in agriculture, which contributes roughly 22 percent of the GDP, a natural disaster spells economic, livelihood and food security concerns to the country. Bangladesh also experiences unseasonal flash floods due to heavy rainfall. These different types of floods can be very destructive and can seriously damage or wipe out infrastructure such as houses, roads, bridges, schools and rural health centres, thereby affecting basic shelter for people, as well as communication, education, health care provision and a host of other critical services. Diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea, dysentery, typhoid, hepatitis and other waterborne and parasitic diseases create immense pressure on the health system.

In addition to floods, Bangladesh has its fair share of tropical cyclones together with tidal surges, arriving inland from the Bay of Bengal, where low pressure depressions are formed, both before and after the Monsoon period. In the recent past, 300,000 people perished in the 1970 cyclone and 120,000 in the 1991 cyclone.   The economic gains made by the country are constantly set back by each disaster. It is said to be one of the major factors holding back the country from achieving a growth rate beyond 7 percent and making the country’s population one of the most vulnerable, particularly those living in the long coastal belt in the South.

Responding to Climate Vulnerability and Extreme Weather Events

Coordination of key government agencies in post disaster situations
The unprecedented floods in 1987 and 1988 as well as 1998, which affected nearly two-thirds of the country, resulted in many deaths and damage to property. In the wake of floods of such proportions, the country started mobilizing its public agencies for better coordination to respond to the aftermath of disasters. The Ministry responsible for disaster management brought other agencies under a coordinated platform, along with the fire service, police, district and upazila (sub-district) administration, coast guard and the Bangladesh Armed Forces.

Early warning systems and linking with NGOs
Following these major disasters, there has been a great demand in the country for the establishment of a Coordinated Disaster Management System. The Government of Bangladesh commenced mobilizing its administration to ensure coordination with the communities. It developed an early warning system which linked the central government to communities through district administration and local government, with information flowing from the Department of Meteorology and the Space Research and Remote Sensing Organization (SPARSSO) to a central cell and thereby to all concerned in the district and upazila levels. A system of warning signals has been developed, which is used to warn communities of imminent cyclones, using radio and TV messages.  Colour coded signal flags denoting severity of the danger are hoisted in coastal areas to alert ships and fishermen. For disasters such as floods and tidal surges, similar radio and TV messages provide warnings and situation reports, enabling the speedy evacuation of people to higher ground, with the assistance of the armed forces. Many NGOs working in disaster prone areas have also joined Government Agencies to mobilize people for disaster management over the past decade. Some of these NGOs are now specialized in the area of disaster management through years of experience gained at the field level.   

Technical support – the success story of recovery of the agriculture sector from floods
A case in point is the recovery of the agriculture sector following the floods of 1998 and 1999. While experts as well as the media made forecast of widespread famine, the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE), supported by experts from a UNDP project on Upazila Cereal Technology Transfer, spread the message through on-field demonstrations to the farmers in the affected areas to plant seed beds at much higher levels than the flood waters during the flooding. Later, they showed the farmers how to plant paddy earlier than usual, while the water level in the fields remained less than a foot high, as the flood waters were receding. This did away with the need for irrigation, and by planting early, the farmers were able to recover their losses incurred due to floods. As a result, the country did not have to import grains, nor did it experience famine as predicted. This is a remarkable success story of the Bangladeshi farmers and the Department of Agriculture Extension in adapting to floods and their efforts to offset the effects of disaster on the country’s food security and economy.    

Bringing together a Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme
However, initially the thrust of the Government of Bangladesh’s efforts remained centred on the post disaster management of 3Rs – namely relief, recovery and rehabilitation. UNDP came forward in 1997-98 to assist the Government in developing a National Framework for a Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme (CDMP).   This went beyond the 3R thrust by looking at pre-disaster from the perspective of ‘risk reduction’ and preparedness.   It also brought a stronger focus on building coping mechanisms of the communities to manage disasters at the local level. The CDMP Framework takes a holistic approach in integrating national priorities such as the Poverty Reduction Strategy with global priorities such as the Millennium Development Goals, and utilizes resources of the government, NGOs, development partners and private sector to maximize national efforts. The Framework was followed by the development of the Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme in 1999-2000.  This took a holistic programme approach by including ten projects under one umbrella, that were geared towards delivering the same national objective built around generating enabling mechanisms and policies and linking them with actual disaster risk reduction at the community level. The Government’s vision in this respect is “to reduce the vulnerability of people, especially the poor, to the effects of natural, environmental and human induced hazards to a manageable and acceptable humanitarian level.” 

The Way Forward: Integrating Future Climate Risks Into Disaster Management

Bangladesh is probably one of the few countries with a fairly comprehensive disaster management programme which links policy interventions at the national level to sub-national level plans and local level actions.  The disaster response and mitigation system in Bangladesh is well coordinated and is considered a priority by the government and its line agencies as well as the armed forces, who play a crucial role in disaster situations. The CDMP has put in place institutions for both Climate Risk Management (CRM) and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in the country. It has created a Climate Change Cell within the Department of Environment to conduct research and feed into the disaster risk reduction process. Although Bangladesh has progressed in terms of having some mechanisms in place while other countries are yet to have them, more action is needed to make the system functionally effective. It would require an Integrated National Framework for CRM & DRR, broader understanding of climate change risks and impacts at all levels, as well as capacity building for assessing risks and analyzing them with sectoral and cross-sectoral perspectives and implications. It would also be necessary to assess the implications of climate change on the lives and livelihoods of the people, and to develop and implement participatory community action plans in order to adapt to climate change. In particular sea level rise, as a result of global climate change, is a looming danger for Bangladesh in the future and the country needs to prepare for mitigating its effects and adapting to it.

For more information:
Shireen K Sayeed
UNDP Bangladesh
E.mail: shireen.sayeed@undp.org