Assessment on Climate Change Adaptation: A Study on Coastal Area of Khulna District in Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh is likely to be one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change due to geographical location and geo-morphological conditions. Bangladesh experiences extremely disastrous situations like a cyclone, flood, saline water intrusion, water logging, heavy rainfall, river erosion, storm surge, etc. that occur frequently in the coastal part of Bangladesh. This results in a huge loss of lives, damages properties and degrades the integrity of the environmental components. This study was conducted on 2 villages (Chotta Chalna and Shivnagar) of Dacope Upazila of Khulna district with the purpose of assessing existing climate change adaptation scenarios and techniques for mitigating climate change-related risks. Necessary data were collected from various sources namely direct household survey, focus group discussion, and key informants interview and from various journals, related thesis papers. About 46% of the respondents cited cyclone is the most terrific type hazard and 17.33% of respondents cited salinity intrusion is the second devastating type hazard that they faced. The results show that the study area climate change risks are very high and existing climate change adaptation techniques are not effective enough to mitigate the risks. Sustainable climate change adaptation strategies are much needed to mitigate the climate change risks of the study area.