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Many people as well as the government in Bangladesh perceive floods and cyclones as recurrent environmental hazards in the country. They also view that these two hazards are the main contributors to crop loss in the country. But, in reality, droughts afflict the country at least as frequently as do major floods and cyclones, averaging about once in 2.5 years (Adnan, 1993, p. 1; Erickson, 1993, p. 5; Hossain 1990, p. 33). In some years, droughts not only cause a greater damage to crops than floods or cyclones, but they also generally affect more farmers across a wider area (Paul, 1995). If not institutionally and economically tackled, the consequences tend to have a far-reaching effect on the given society, and the socioeconomic problems would assume a chronic pattern.

Of all the natural disasters, drought is the most gradual and the most hard to predict. However, this insidious disaster continually affects the lives and livelihoods of farmers living in drought-affected areas. The northwestern part of Bangladesh is recognized as being more severely affected by drought than the rest of the country, as drought is a recurring event in this area. It has substantial impacts on agriculture and causes great suffering for farmers – in particular, poor and small farmers, who are more vulnerable to drought. Therefore, this study tries to illustrate farmers’ existing coping practices with regard to drought. It also addresses their prioritized adaptation practices, which are based on local context and available resources. This study not only focuses on the implementation of these adaptation practices from the national to the local level, but it also mentions various roles of stakeholders and a definite timeframe for each adaptation practice.

The northwestern region of Bangladesh has experienced drought more in recent years than earlier decades because of high rainfall variability accompanied by high temperature. As Bangladesh is an agro-based country, agriculture and its dependent farmers’ livelihood face substantial impacts. To cope with drought, farmers of this region performed various adaptation measures by their own efforts along with institutional support. But these efforts and support are not sufficient enough for them to endure drought. Therefore, this chapter discloses how to measure drought-affected areas and identify action-oriented drought-adaptive practices of farmers that will enhance drought risk management policy and actions in northwestern Bangladesh.

All over the world, Bangladesh is well known as a flood- and cyclone-affected country. But in the recent years the slow onset disaster of drought is more frequent in Bangladesh due to climatic as well as nonclimatic variability. As a consequence, agriculture along with its dependent farmers’ livelihoods tremendously experience its adverse impacts. Therefore, the main focus of this chapter is to discuss about drought, its effects on different sectors, and how in different levels a number of drought risk management actions are carried out to cope with this insidious disaster in the context of Bangladesh.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on the regional impacts of Climate Change (IPCC, 2007a), a drastic change in rainfall patterns in the warmer climate would occur in Bangladesh, and it may experience a 5% to 6% increase of rainfall by 2030 due to glacier melting and more intense monsoons, which will create frequent large and prolonged floods as well as an increase in droughts outside the monsoon season. Furthermore, in the context of global warming, most of the climatic models project a decrease in precipitation in the dry season and an increase during the monsoon season in south Asia (Christensen et al., 2007). This will cause a combination of more extreme floods and droughts in this region. Therefore, the moderately drought-affected areas will be turned into severely drought-prone areas within next 20 to 30 years (IPCC, 2007b).

The purpose of this paper is to examine key factors affecting the economic involvement of women in Bangladesh and women’s involvement with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) particularly in microcredit operating in that country.

The study uses nationally representative data set. Quantitative analysis was utilised to explore data contained in the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Surveys 2007 and 2011.

The findings indicate that age, marital status, number of children living in the household, place of residence, geographical location, education, partner’s education and the wealth index are important factors in enabling women’s involvement in economic activities. In other words, the key findings emerged from the study are first, the low level of women’s economic activities in Bangladesh with a majority involved in farming, agriculture and poultry; second, those women involved in the labour market generally tended to come from poor backgrounds, have very little education, live in the Northwest geographical region and have a large family living in the same house; and finally, age, currently married, having a higher number of children, living in rural areas, from the Northwest region with almost no education and belonging to the poor wealth index quintile are found to be associated more with NGO activities in Bangladesh.

The findings indicate there are potential barriers that are preventing Bangladeshi women from engaging in the labour market that could reinforce the case for reshaping the government’s labour policies. The study reveals that the recent economic crisis has no significant impact on the women labour force participation as well their involvement in NGO activities in Bangladesh. It is generally understood that enhancing women’s economic participation and NGO activities has a positive impact at family, community and country levels. The study concludes that investing in women, particularly in creating employment opportunities including NGO sectors can help the country as a safeguard even during the economic crisis. It is anticipated that the findings will help policy-makers in enhancing female labour force participation as well as encouraging them to engage in NGO activities in Bangladesh.

The research paper is original in terms of conceptual framework, research design and statistical analysis.

This chapter reflects on the approach and learning of an innovative project in Bangladesh that addresses drinking water security issues of the poor and marginal communities through participatory research, innovation, and social mobilization. The people, living in the most difficult geophysical areas, are facing severe crisis of drinking water and associated health risks due to remoteness, seasonality, social isolation, and poor institutional links. The geophysical constraints such as growing salinity, arsenic, flood and drought, and drawdown of groundwater tables have aggravated the problems. The existing government services hardly reach to the most unserved and needy people because of remoteness and lack of responsiveness of the government departments. A participatory action research project led to collective understanding about the severity of the problems and associated health risks and vulnerability. This again built greater awareness and motivated the poor, women, and marginal communities to establish links with key actors and take various local and collective actions toward ensuring their greater access to drinking water, sanitation facilities, and health services from the relevant government departments and development agencies.

Farmer organizations (FOs) can elevate many of the production- and marketing-related challenges by ensuring access to technology, farming information and loan for inputs and mechanization. This study assesses the major factors that affect the participation in FOs by the smallholder rice farmers in Bangladesh and evaluates the impacts of the participation on rice yield and production efficiency.

The present study used primary data collected from 1,000 smallholder rice farmers in northwest Bangladesh, consisting of 250 farmers those participated in an organization. This study utilized a sample selection stochastic production frontier (SPF) method, a combination of the conventional SPF and the Heckman's sample selection model, to control for biases stemming from observed and unobserved attributes.

This study demonstrates that participation in an organization is significantly affected by smallholder rice farmers' education, occupation, family size, household income, land ownership and the location where they reside. At the same time, the participation status affects the productivity of smallholder farmers. Findings indicate that farmers who participated in an organization had higher rice yield (11% more) and were technically more efficient (1.4 percentage points higher) compared to farmers who did not participate.

Since this study was carried out with representative sampled farmers from northwest Bangladesh, the findings may not represent all farmers' perceptions of FOs in the country.

Even though more than 200,000 FOs are currently in operation, knowledge regarding the effectiveness of Bangladesh's FOs is limited. Notably, this study used a relatively new method, sample selection SPF model, to investigate the impact of FOs on the production efficiency of smallholder rice farmers in northwest Bangladesh. Therefore, this study contributes to the literature in elucidating the factors affecting participation in FOs and its impact on rice yield and efficiency. Since FOs have been somewhat ineffective in their role as service providers in Bangladesh, this study’s results will guide policymakers to intervene more successfully regarding the changes needed.

According to the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) (2008), Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country to natural hazards and disasters due to its geography, high population density, and poverty. The country is exposed to a variety of recurring natural hazards such as floods, cyclones, droughts, earthquakes, and riverbank erosion (Ministry of Food and Disaster Management (MoFDM), 2007). Furthermore, Harmeling (2010) mentioned that Bangladesh heads the list of countries most at risk for floods. Bangladesh has suffered from 93 large-scale natural disasters in the period from 1991 to 2000 that killed 0.2 million people and caused loss of property valued at about 59 billion dollars in the agriculture and infrastructure sectors (Climate Change Cell, Ministry of Environment and Forest, Bangladesh, 2009). Fig. 1 represents different natural hazard-prone areas of Bangladesh.

Social stress and alcohol/arrack drinking are interrelated and vary across the sub cultures or cultures around the world. This study aims to examine relationships between social stress and arrack drinking patterns among Muslim, Hindu, Santaland Oraon communities in Rasulpur of Bangladesh.

This study was conducted in Rasulpur of Bangladesh. In this region arrack produced from palm and date juice and arrack drinker of four ethnic communities is available round the year. Out of 760 male arrack drinkers, 391 samples (109 Muslim, 103 Hindu, 89 Santal and 90 Oraon) were randomly selected and were interviewed with semi‐structural questionnaire.

The results of multinomial logistic regression analysis revealed that there were significant differences in and relationships between social stress and arrack drinking pattern among the communities studied. Results suggested that the 2‐35 times higher risks of Hindu and Muslim's social stressors than the Santal and Oraon were significantly related to their arrack drinking pattern.

Although the findings of this study have been successful in understanding cross‐cultural variations in and relationships between social stress and arrack drinking patterns among the ethnic communities, further empirical study is needed into how coping or social support influence the relationships between the variables studied. In spite of this the findings may apply in formulating social policy and programs to reduce arrack drinking in the context of social stress in rural Bangladesh.

This paper is original in linking of theory, policy and practice in the context of social stress at reducing arrack drinking pattern in rural Bangladesh.