Chapter 2 Impacts of climate change induced hazards and adaptation processes in Bangladesh: an overview

Abstract

Living with physical hazards is an everyday issue for the people of Bangladesh because different seasons bring different kinds of uncertainties. Sometimes traditional knowledge and practices (Alam, 2007) help them to adjust to these conditions; in some occasions, these hazards turn into catastrophic disasters causing deaths and bringing unbearable damages in different sectors. In addition to the tangible damages incurred due to hazards, in most of the cases, these hazards injure the internal social organizations at different levels (for example, household, community, and institutional) and affect their assets. Thus, the community resilience is greatly weakened, which makes people susceptible to upcoming hazards. Scientists suggest that climate change-induced threats and uncertainties in the forms of erratic rainfall patterns that result in drought conditions and sometimes floods, abnormal foggy conditions, change in the wind direction and the characteristic patterns of seasons, anomalies in the temperature regimes, and the occurrence of cyclones will bring new dimensions to existing situations. These natural hazards, temperature rises, and sea level rise–induced inundations will contribute to the breakdown of the traditional systems of living; they also bring change in topographical factors (for example, flooding), biophysical factors (changes in the crop yields, runoff, risks of the spread of infectious diseases, changes in the vegetation pattern), and socioeconomic factors (per capital income, health, education, population density) (World Bank, 2001).

Citation

Islam, T., Aminur Rahman, M. and Mallick, F. (2010), "Chapter 2 Impacts of climate change induced hazards and adaptation processes in Bangladesh: an overview", Shaw, R., Pulhin, J.M. and Jacqueline Pereira, J. (Ed.) Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction: An Asian Perspective (Community, Environment and Disaster Risk Management, Vol. 5), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 19-36. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2040-7262(2010)0000005008