Adaptation to climate change impacts and coastal zone management in Bangladesh

Abstract

The maintenance of peoples’ livelihoods in the coastal zone of Bangladesh largely depends on the degree to which key stakeholders at all levels of decision-making can participate in climate adaptation planning and implementation processes. This is well recognised in Bangladesh’s Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plan, the National Adaptation Action Plan, and the Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan, which emphasise the need for integrated multi-level decision-making at all stages of the adaptive management cycle. These plans, however, have been repeatedly found to be less effective than they could be at fulfilling their stated objectives. A principal reason often provided for this is that, in practice, the planning processes only encourages stakeholder engagement during the development phase, and subsequent implementation and monitoring of developments tend to be top down in nature, which also creates critical gaps between national and local level coastal zone governance.

Thus, the aim of this thesis is to understand how stakeholders at different decision-making levels and geographic scales (national policy-making, regional policy implementation and local community) can more effectively engage in the national decision-making process, particularly in prioritizing adaptation options suited to specific coastal regions. The research methodology involved the review of national policy and planning documents and processes, and semi-structured interviews, surveys and focus groups with different levels of stakeholders. A comparative analysis was also undertaken between a coastal island district and a coastal estuary district in Bangladesh, which examined the role of coastal communities in decision-making processes, and assessed their capacity to adapt to climate change.

The key findings and outputs of the research include: a set of principles proposed for sustainable coastal zone management; recommendations for adaptation policy and future research; and a revised ‘decision-making framework’ for coastal adaptation to climate change in Bangladesh, which builds on the strengths of the current policies and overcomes the institutional gaps and risks related to climate change. Considering the barriers to the effective implementation of the suite of coastal and adaptation plans, this case study approach also provides an evaluation of the successes and failures of the decision-making process, and its relevance for similar regions in other developing countries of the world.