Climate Vulnerability Assessment and Building Community Resiliency at Kalaskati Union, Bakerganj

Abstract

Bangladesh is frequently cited as a country that is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Socioeconomic sectors like agriculture and fishing are more climate-sensitive in the country. These climate change impacts are extremely detrimental to the economy, the environment, and the social development of the people in the study area. To complete the objectives, both qualitative and quantitative data have been collected through questionnaire surveys, photography, and observation methods, and those data have been involved with primary and secondary data collected from the community, government, and NGO officials. To conduct the survey for the research, the total sample size was 100. From the study, different climate vulnerabilities like 38% cyclone, 46% river-bank erosion, 41% flood, 36% seasonal change are severely noticed and 43% moderate condition of drought affects the socio-economic conditions. 84% of people faced problems in crop production and 75% changed their lifestyle due to irregular events. Consequently, most poor families experienced food insecurity, health problems, water shortage, and hygiene problems. Damaged infrastructure also hampered earnings and production. People try to control the situations and approve a diversity of options and technologies to adapt to the climate change impacts in the area. The government and different NGOs actively perform adaptation practices for building disaster resiliency. Union Disaster Management Committee serves resilience activities such as disseminating early warnings among the community during cyclones. NGOs help to build cooperative agricultural farms and inspire local people to engage in aforestation, balancing the local climate. Using developed seeds of vegetables and food crops, changing cropping patterns, using organic fertilizer to improve soil fertility instead of chemical fertilizers, and irrigating vegetables and some crops for increasing productivity. The community people in the study area recommended increasing climate-resilient activities through community participation and enhancement of their capacity.