TITLE:
Assessment of Community Based Climate Change Risk Focusing Agriculture and Fisheries Sector in Haor Areas of Bangladesh
AUTHORS:
Ahmmed Zulfiqar Rahaman, Gopal Chandra Sarker, Bhuiya Md. Tamim Al Hossain, Sadequr Rahman Bhuiyan, A. S. M. Julker Naem
KEYWORDS:
Haor, Climate Change, Vulnerability Mapping, Risk Assessment, Participatory Methods, GIS
JOURNAL NAME:
Atmospheric and Climate Sciences,
Vol.11 No.2,
April
30,
2021
ABSTRACT: The research paper aims at understanding the level
of climate change risk of the Haor areas of Bangladesh. It follows a
participatory approach, using Focus Group Discussion (FGD) and Key Informant Interview
(KII) to identify important climate change induced hazards, assess the
probability of occurrences of the hazards and level of their consequences.
Using geo-spatial techniques, the paper prepares hazard risk maps and risk
hotspot maps. Policy documents, previous researches, and Government statistics
and reports helped to develop the concepts and planning of the research. The
unparalleled hydro-ecological attributes of Haor areas pose both opportunities
and constraints for the local population. Poverty, lack of basic infrastructure
and amenities, awareness and external support have already put the people in Haor
areas in a vulnerable situation while the recurring natural hazards and
shifting pattern of climate are making the constraints nearly unmanageable.
Excessive rainfall in the monsoon and drought in the dry season is affecting
the farming and fishery-based communities the most. The community perceptions
on hazards, their occurrences, consequences and relative importance of each
hazard for the agriculture or fisheries sector in the study area have been
collected from the FGDs and subsequently analyzed to produce individual and
multi-hazard risk maps for the area based on scoring. This information is also
used to rank the Upazillas in the study area depending on risk level. The
community people were also asked to select the important elements or structural
facilities at risk in their area needed for their life and livelihood. Based on
this selection, risk hotspot map for the study area has been prepared using GIS
based weighted overlay methods. The final risk hotspot map identifies about
hundred unions in the area as hotspots. This paper might encourage the local
government organizations to make choice on the intervention as well as intervention needs for protecting livelihoods in the
study area. The results of the study will be helpful in planning adaptation
options for future for the study area as well as effectively allocate
resources/investments to protect population and livelihoods from possible climate
change induced hazards.