How Vulnerable are Bangladesh’s Indigenous People to Climate Change?

Bernhard Gunter (), Atiq Rahman and A. F. M. Ataur Rahman
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Atiq Rahman: Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS)

No BDRWPS No. 1, Bangladesh Development Research Working Paper Series (BDRWPS) from Bangladesh Development Research Center (BDRC)

Abstract: This paper compares the vulnerabilities to climate change and climate variability of the indigenous people with the Bengali population of Bangladesh. It distinguishes between (a) individual vulnerabilities that are related to an individual’s capability to adapt to climate change and; (b) spatial vulnerabilities, that is, vulnerabilities that are related to the location of a person (like the exposure to climate change-induced disasters). While an individual’s capability to adapt to climate change is determined by many factors, some relatively simple approximation is to look at poverty, landlessness, and illiteracy. Spatial vulnerabilities are reviewed by looking at drought hazard maps, flood hazard maps, landslide hazard maps, and cyclone hazard maps. Hence, the paper compares levels of poverty, landlessness, illiteracy, and the more direct though also more subjective exposures to increased droughts, floods, landslides, and cyclones across the two population groups. The paper concludes with some broad suggestions on adaptation strategies of indigenous people as well as suggestions for policy interventions to reduce climate change-induced vulnerabilities for indigenous people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT).

Keywords: Bangladesh; climate change; vulnerability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2008-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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