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Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change in Bangladesh: The Global Initiative at Local Level
Aka Firowz Ahmad, Ph.D Professor & Chairman Department of Public Administration University of Dhaka, Bangladesh Email: akafirowzahmad@yahoo.com

Introduction
When we are talking about climate change in our modern setting, we refer to changes brought about by industrialization as seen in the increased use of energy sources that emit harmful gases into the atmosphere. These gases have a warming effect that effects climate patterns. In the recent past, climate change has impacted negatively on the livelihoods of people particularly the rural dwellers in many countries. Many developed and developing countries experience natural disasters largely in form of drought and floods, albeit in different magnitudes. The whole world is worried about the unnatural changes occurring in global climate.1 The severity of storms, droughts, rainfall, floods and other natural disasters has been increasing in Asian countries and in Bangladesh in particular, due to climate change. Global warming threatens agriculture, which is the backbone of Bangladesh. With 140 million people, Bangladesh is one of the worlds densest
nations and also one of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. People in Bangladesh live precariously close to the risks of cyclones, floods and droughts and more than 100 million people live in rural areas. Two-thirds of the country is less than 5 meters above

sea level and in an average year, a quarter of the country is inundated. Bangladesh has experienced severe floods every 4 to 5 years that may cover more than 60 percent of the country, resulting in significant losses.2 Every year, natural disasters have widespread effects on Bangladesh, touching every corner of the country. Due to limited resources, Bangladesh does not have the capacity to ensure that appropriate measures are taken to mitigate the damage.3 A few donor agencies working in Bangladesh and they do have different programmes/projects focusing mainly on community based adaptation. This paper examines Bangladeshs response to climate change and the efficacy of the community based adaptation to climate change in the context of Bangladesh. For some time there has been a debate concerning the best response to the climate change-- should we try to minimise or even prevent the cause of climate change (known as mitigation) or should we simple prepare for the changes and make adjustments as they
1 2

http://www.modernghana.com/blogs/250259/31/climate-change-and-bangladesh.html http://beta.worldbank.org/content/bangladesh-economics-adaptation-climate-change-study,2.6.2010 3 ibid

2 arise (adaptation)? While mitigation has traditionally been the pivotal issue for many climate change experts, adaptation to the effects of climate change is now acknowledged as necessary for responding effectively and equitably to the impacts of both climate change and climate variability. In recent years, adaptation has become a key focus of the scientific and policy-making communities and is now a major area of discussion in the multilateral climate change process. The debate around global climate change remains stubbornly connected to the environmental movement, while scientists describe scenarios of climate change that go far beyond traditional environmental issues. Even moderate global climate change will reshape the face of the world, radically altering economic systems, infrastructure, ecological systems, and even physically moving human populations. The response to global climate change will involve changing energy, transportation, financial, and cultural systems and a coordinated global response. Categorizing global climate change as just an environmental issue does a disservice to the scale of the problem and excludes groups that must be involved in the debate of how to respond to climate change. Recognizing this reality forced me to examine the divide between environmental and humanitarian communities, two essential constituencies for this issue, on their solutions, evaluations of the threat, and efforts to respond to the global climate crisis. Even a brief survey of materials on the topic reveals a deep divide between environmental groups primarily advocating for mitigation efforts and humanitarian groups that are grappling with basic questions of adapting to extant climactic conditions, let alone a rapidly changing world.

The Controversy
The issue of adaptation vs. mitigation grew highly controversial in the wake of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The scientists involved in the effort established the existence of anthropogenic climate change, possible future scenarios, and outlined some ideas for reacting to climate change. The IPCC stopped short of recommending any particular strategy, instead claiming that it was a political decision. Most environmental groups seized on the research to validate their position that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced, treating them as pollutants. Aerospace scientists argued for space technology solutions and economists argued for balance between cutting emissions and adapting to change. The acceptance of global climate change as an unavoidable reality by many of those advocating for adaptation was seen as fatalistic dithering in the face of a clear policy avenue. Ever since, most environmental groups have held it taboo to discuss adaptation. The end result of over a decade of campaigning to halt global climate change remains underwhelming. Environmental campaigners efforts to mobilize the scale of changes required to respond to global climate change are stymied by the intransigence of the fossil fuel lobby, the lack of urgency on behalf of many people, and the resistance by the United States. The United States, as the worlds largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is the key to tackling global climate change, but politics have blocked every effort to

3 implement major effort to react to global climate change on a national level. Until the United States is brought to the table on tackling global climate change, a truly global effort to tackle a global issue can not be undertaken.

Response to Global Climate Change

Formal responses to climate change had begun with the First World Climate Conference in 1979. At this time, when the first effects of human induced climate change were discovered, the changes were so small it didnt seem like a big issue. But by 1988 when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed the dangerous consequences of climate change became clearer. 4 The immediate response to climate change exposed in the form of holding seminar conferences, workshops,dialogue, meeting etc. All these efforts help develop policies, strategies, intervention and funding mechanism for conducting programs in response to climate change. But the strategies for responses to the climate changes do not follow any linear perspective, some are proactive and mitigating; and others are mainly reactive and adhere to adaptation to the climate changes. The primary vehicle designed to tackle global climate change has been the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol is an international convention, negotiated through the UN that attempts to cap the allowable emissions of developed nations to a variety of percentages below the countries 1990 emissions levels. It has gone into effect, despite the fact that the United States pulled out of the protocol. Nevertheless, scientists claim that reductions far greater than the Kyoto Protocol will be needed to stabilize the climate. Other efforts like those by international groups of cities to set emissions reductions targets, or a collection of states in the Northeastern United States to tackle emissions reductions with Canada, are important steps for environmental campaigners. However, what is considered politically possible by many involved in climate negotiations remains far short of what is needed. Both mitigation and adaptation are important ways of dealing with climate change. Until recently, international climate policy didn't address adaptation in part because of a hope that we could mitigate climate change and in part because the possible effects were too far down the road. Mitigation was the main goal of a facet of the Kyoto Protocol. There were two programs laid out in the Protocol to deal with mitigation: the Clean Development Mechanism, which is geared towards developing countries, and Joint Implementation, which is geared towards developed countries. While these programs still exist, adaptation has also started to receive more attention at international negotiations. This is in part because adaptation has so many benefits in the present, especially for people in developing countries who work in climate-dependent trades. At Copenhagen, the US pledged to start a $100 billion fund to help with adaptation in developing countries.

Pender, J.S. 2008. What Is Climate Change? And How It Will Effect Bangladesh. Briefing Paper. (Final Draft). Dhaka, Bangladesh : Church of Bangladesh Social Development Programme.

Mitigation Debate
Climate mitigation is any action taken to permanently eliminate or reduce the long-term risk and hazards of climate change to human life, property. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines mitigation as: An anthropogenic intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases. Mitigation tackles the causes of climate change, adaptation tackles the effects of the phenomenon. The potential to adjust in order to minimize negative impact and maximize any benefits from changes in climate is known as adaptive capacity. A successful adaptation can reduce vulnerability by building on and strengthening existing coping strategies. In general the more mitigation there is, the less will be the impacts to which we will have to adjust, and the less the risks for which we will have to try and prepare. Conversely, the greater the degree of preparatory adaptation, the less may be the impacts associated with any given degree of climate change. Mitigation efforts are advocated by the vast majority of environmental groups, who focus on stopping global warming. The problem with this position is that scientists agree that sufficient greenhouse gases have been emitted into the atmosphere, that a certain level of climate change is unavoidable. While the mitigation of global climate change is essential to prevent further and worse impacts, it can not substitute for an effort to look at the impacts of climate change. The groups advocating for mitigation efforts to tackle global climate change are primarily environmental groups. These groups remain the most engaged on this issue and set much of the terms of debate. Concerns over protecting the environment, preventing global climate change from disrupting ecosystems and threatening species have been themes running throughout the debate. Environmental campaigners and advocates have also focused on human impacts, tolls, economic costs and other related issues as ways to target politicians and groups not normally concerned with traditional environmental issues. While some success has been reached on these fronts, global climate change remains primarily seen as an environmental issue and coalitions assembled to tackle these issues are usually driven by environmental organizations.

Mitigation is an essential and the primary effort to slow and halt global climate change, but achieving this victory will be impossible without a broadening of the groups advancing this agenda and an elevation of the issue in the minds of citizens worldwide. The relative inaction on an issue that has the potential to reshape the world, compared to the political efforts around terrorism or nuclear proliferation, presents a dilemma. Nonetheless, mitigation in one part has already failed as a strategy in isolation, as scientists identify the mounting human and ecological tolls of climate change every day. An expansion of the definition of the problem and the solutions advocated for global climate change may be necessary to break the political deadlock preventing action on climate change.

5 There is a common tendency to put the mitigation responsibility on the shoulders of the developed countries alone for historical reasons. In fact, this position may create more problems than it is capable of solving. Besides, we should not lose our sight of the developing countries (e.g. China, India, Brazil, Mexico)--which are witnessing fast industrialization and higher economic growth. Because of the nature and level of their economic advancement these countries would be polluting the environment at a much faster rate than it was done by other countries in the past. There scholars who offer ethical views on different aspects of mitigation. Judith SimmerBrown states that relentless consumerism pervades our society and the World. Greed drives so many of the damaging systems of our planet. On a different note but with a similar spirit the socially engaged American biologist Stephanie Kaza once stated that in America each of us consumes our body weight each day in materials extracted and processed from farms, mines, rangelands, and forests-120 pounds on average. Since 1950, consumption of energy, meat, and lumber has doubled; use of plastic has increased fivefold; use of aluminum has increased seven fold; and airplane mileage has increased 33fold per person. We now own twice as many cars as in 1950. And with every bite, every press of the accelerator, every swipe of the credit card in our shopping malls, we have left a larger ecological footprint on the face of the world. We have squeezed our wealth out of the bodies of plantation workers in Thailand, farmers in Ecuador, factory workers in Malaysia. David Loy in his book The Religion of Market maintained that the crisis of consumerism is infecting every culture of the World, most of them emulating our American Life style. He considers whether the consumption has actually become the new religion. He further states that the religion of consumerism is based on two tenets of beliefs: 1. growth and enhanced world trade benefit everyone, and 2. growth will not be constrained by the inherent limits of a finite planet. Its ground is ego gratifications, its path is an ever-increasing array of wants, and its fruition is expressed in Descartian perversion- I shop, therefore I am.

Adaptation
Adaptation remains a strategy that is advocated by mostly humanitarian groups that argue it is necessary to protect development and vulnerable populations. As a strategy, it spans a wide variety of issues, from good governance to early warning system or sea walls to wetlands restoration. One of the major issues facing adaptation as a viable strategy is that many environmental groups remain opposed to dams, levees, and other projects that are sometimes labeled as for adaptation.

Adaptation to environmental change is not a new concept. Human societies have shown throughout history a strong capacity for adapting to different climates and environmental changes. For example, farmers, foresters have been forced to adapt to numerous challenges to overcome adversity or to remove important impediments to sustained productivity. Examples of adaptation and coping strategies with current climate

6 fluctuations include farmers planting different crops for different seasons, and wildlife migrating to more suitable habitats as the seasons change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines adaptation as the adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities

Approaches to Adaptation
Adaptation was not a major part of the debate when climate change came onto the international policy agenda at the UN General Assembly in 1988. Initial approaches to managing climate change generally focused on mitigation through reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the source or increasing carbon sequestration through reforestation and better land use management (Ayers and Huq 2006). Adaptation was not a major part of the debate when climate change came onto the international policy agenda at the UN General Assembly in 1988. Initial approaches to managing climate change generally focused on mitigation through reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the source or increasing carbon sequestration through reforestation and better land use management. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992 mentioned adaptation only five times, never defining it. Since then, adaptation has gained standing within the international climate change arena. The Third Assessment Report of the IPCC in 2001 showed that climate change impacts are already happening because for the first time the IPCC used observations over the previous 10 years rather than working solely on predictions. Six years later, at the 13th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, adaptation formed one of four steps of the so-called Bali Roadmap- which paves the way for a post-Kyoto policy framework to include adaptation alongside mitigation, technology cooperation, and finance.

The most common approach to adaptation considers how far processes of adaptation can reduce dangerous impacts of climate change and therefore defines the highest acceptable thresholds of greenhouse gas concentrations. This approach also supports adaptation practices that aim to lessen the impacts of increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, for example, through engineering and technological measures including new seed varieties, water management, and early warning systems based on projections of future climate conditions and an expected severity in events such as storms, droughts, or tidal surges (Klein and Persson 2008). Some observers have pointed out that focusing on uncertain climate impacts has slowed down adaptation practices because potential victims of climate change and aid donors are often reluctant to commit to adaptation if they do not yet know exactly what they are adapting to. Others hold the view that largescale engineering or technological investments may not be the most cost-effective way to reduce vulnerability to climate change (Burton et al 2003). A longstanding literature within development studies has argued that risks posed by disasters and natural hazards are often linked more to social, economic, and even political factors in different contexts rather than simply the size of physical events such as storms and floods (Wisner et al 2004).

7 A more development-oriented perspective to adaptation considers development and adaptation risks as strongly complementary. Under this approach, adaptation is not only focused on anticipating enhanced physical risks associated with increased greenhouse gas concentrations. Rather, it also addresses developmental needs such as improving access to livelihoods and productive assets to increase the adaptive capacity of poorer, more vulnerable people (Ayers and Dodman 2009). Community-based adaptation takes the approach of adaptation as development. Responding to the concept that adaptation is local and place-based, it addresses the locally and contextually specified nature of climate change vulnerability because it takes place at local levels where people encounter impacts, build adaptive capacity, and respond (Kates 2000). A community-based approach considers that adaptation strategies must be generated through participatory processes, involving local stakeholders and development and disaster risk-reduction practitioners, rather than being restricted to impacts-based scientific inputs alone. As such, expertise in vulnerability reduction must come from local community-based case studies and indigenous knowledge of locally appropriate solutions to climatic variability and extremes.

Bangladesh: Climate Change and its Impact

Countries like Bangladesh are not big GHG emitters. Unfortunately, as predicted by the national and international research communities involved in climate change impact assessments, poor countries such as Bangladesh would be the worst victims of climate change and sea level rise.5 The impact will be intensified by the fact that Bangladesh is both one of the most populated and one of the poorest nations on earth. In terms of the impact of climate change few places in the world will experience the range of effects and the severity of changes that will occur in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is experiencing frequent severe weather patterns, in the form of floods, cyclones, heavy rains, droughts, river erosion and salinity intrusion due to climate change.6 Due to climate change, the weather in Bangladesh has changed. Water levels have fallen, temperatures have risen, and the incidence of floods, dry spells and cyclones have all increased, affecting both people's lifestyle and the crops. At least 30 rivers, including the the Padma, the Gomti and the Teesta, have dried up. And most of the other rivers in Bangladesh are being lost because they are being filled with soil. Parts of northern Bangladesh are becoming desert. Geological and biological changes in the area are threatening normal life.7 At the same time, every day, Bangladesh is losing ponds, lakes, dams and forestry. National and regional varieties of fish are being lost. Specialists have reported that 54 varieties of fish in Bangladesh have already been lost due to climate change. And forest animals are also being lost. At least 70 percent of people in Bangladesh are living in very poor situations. Many elements of both human society and the environment are sensitive
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http://www.bdix.net/sdnbd_org/world_env_day/2004/bangladesh/climate_change_index.htm ibid 7 ibd

8 to climate variability and change. Human health, agriculture, natural ecosystems, coastal areas and temperatures are all sensitive to changes in climate.8 Following are the some of the impacts climate change in the context of Bangladesh:9 1. Increased risk of extreme events like cyclone, tornados, storm surges etc. this will have significant implications on the lives and livelihoods of affected communities 2. Increasingly erratic and intense rainfall, increasing risks of floods, drought and erosion 3. Loss of biodiversity in mangrove forests, due to storm damage, as well as changing balances between rainfall and salinity driven both by seasonal drought and sea-level rise 4. Significantly increased flooding due to sea-level rise as well as melting of Himalayan glaciers by the end of the 21st century 5. Sedimentation of riverbeds, leading to changing ecosystem dynamics, and increasing risk of flood 6. Transformation of thousands of hectares of land from non-flood-prone to moderately or extremely flood-prone status 7. Beginnings of the progressive inundation of mangrove forests, farm land, and other land in the area, stemming from sea level rise

Bangladesh: Response to Climate Change

Over the last three decades, the Government has invested over $10 billion (at constant 2007 prices) to make the country more climate resilient and less vulnerable to natural disasters. Since the 1970s, the Government of Bangladesh with the support of development partners, has invested in:

Flood management schemes to raise agricultural productivity in low lying areas Flood protection and drainage in urban areas Coastal embankment projects to prevent tidal flooding and incursions of saline water Cyclone shelters Disaster management projects. Building cyclone shelters. Irrigation schemes to enable dry season crop. Agriculture research programs to develop saline, drought and flood adapted high yielding crop varieties. Coastal greenbelt projects.

Recognizing the increased future vulnerability of its development objectives to climate change, the Government of Bangladesh prepared the National Adaptation Program of
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ibid CBA Country Programme Strategy of UNDP in Bangladesh

9 Action (NAPA) in 2005. This was followed by the adoption in 2008 of the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP) prepared by the Ministry of Forests and Environment in consultation with all relevant stakeholders. The BCCSAP is the main basis for the Governments efforts to combat climate change over the next tens years. The plan lays out a 10-year program to build the capacity and resilience of Bangladesh to meet the challenges of a changing climate change. The plan envisions a financing need of about $5 billion during the first 5 years through 2014. The government of Bangladesh has recently established a Climate Change Fund from its own resources with an initial capitalization of $45 million. To complement this initiative and to ensure donor harmonization, development partners in Bangladesh have agreed to establish a Multi Donor Trust Fund for Climate Change. The latter will be administered by the World Bank with a proposed initial contribution of about $100 million. Bangladesh has also been an active participant in the international discussions on climate change and acted as the leader of 47 Least Developed Countries at the 15th Conference of the parties of the UNFCCC at Copenhagen in December 2009.10 The international community has recognized Bangladesh as a particularly vulnerable country for some time, and the country has received disaster management and adaptation support in several sectors. Bangladesh has developed some capacity for dealing with the impacts of climate change at the national level and has mobilized policy response options that deal with vulnerability reduction to environmental variability in general and, more recently, to climate change in particular. For example, Bangladesh was one of the first countries to submit its National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to the UNFCCC and more recently has developed a national climate change strategy to deal with mitigation and adaptation. In Bangladesh, many development partners are actively taking part in community based adaptation to climate change.
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Bangladesh CARE Bangladesh Practical Action, Bangladesh Oxfam, Bangladesh Action Aid, Bangladesh Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies (BCAS) Rupantar (local NGO from Khulna)

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http://beta.worldbank.org/content/bangladesh-economics-adaptation-climate-change-study

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Center for Sustainable development (CFSD) UNDP, WB and ADB donor community)

Among development partners CARE and UNDP have been running important programmes/projects focusing on community based adaptation to climate change in Bangladesh. CARE suggests that climate change presents a profound threat to a world where
poverty has been overcome and people live in dignity and security. The worlds poorest people are the most vulnerable to climate change though they contribute least to its causes. Without a wellfunctioning international adaptation regime, they will pay the highest price. CAREs further suggests that: Sufficient adaptation funding, while crucial, is not enough. We must also ensure that funds are used effectively, and are channelled where they are needed most. Existing funding mechanisms for adaptation are not designed to deliver funds in a way that targets the most vulnerable. Systematic assessment of socio-economic vulnerability within high-risk geographic regions is currently not an integrated part of international and national approaches to adaptation. Proposed priority adaptation measures are therefore unlikely to reach or benefit the most vulnerable groups, who need the support the most. Vulnerable groups within countries and communities must be identified. Vulnerability assessments must incorporate analysis of economic, social and political determinants of adaptive capacity. Developing countries should be assisted in carrying out human vulnerability and climate risk assessments. Resources for inclusive and participatory assessments and planning must be available up front.

The UNDP also emphasizes on community based adaptation to climate change. UNDP states that based on priorities identified in the National Communications to the UNFCCC and recently completed NAPA process, as well as country priorities articulated in the CP/GCF/RCF, the Community Based Adaptation Programme in Bangladesh should focus its activities in two key priority areas: water and agriculture. It has now been established that those two sectors are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts and play an important role in the lives and livelihoods of the majority of the people. UNDP suggests that CBA projects in Bangladesh will focus on community-level natural resource management activities which reduce climate change risks while protecting biodiversity or sustainable managing land/conserving biodiversity, enhancing the resilience of communities and ecosystems in the face of climate change impacts. Other mentionable CBA programmes include:

Char Development and Settlement Project III in Noakhali: emphasis was on holistic development and poverty alleviation through promotion of alternative agriculture, building cyclone shelters/schools, land resettlement, awareness and education, etc. to foster peoples adaptation to climate change impacts Integrated Planning for Sustainable Water Management (IPSWAM) project in the southwest region of Bangladesh organized local communities into CBOs, to manage their water resources and their related issues through good governance,

11 as an adaptation activity (since manifestations of climate change will be in terms of water scarcity/floods)

Community Based Adaptation in Bangladesh: Some Snapshots

As a part of the community based adaptation to climate change, a number international NGOs are working with local communities in a few districts to develop ways that farmers can grow food on flooded land, using a process of community-led identification and prioritization of natural resource management options and technologies (Rahman 2009). For example, the innovative technology of floating gardens, or hydroponics, which villagers have taken up in many other waterlogged and flooded areas of Bangladesh, has been introduced to Gaibandha. A floating garden is built from a raft of water hyacinth typically about 8 meters long and 1 meter wide. The raft is covered with soil, compost, and manure, in which vegetable seeds are planted. The raft will last just one year but can be used as fertilizer during the dry season. To ensure sustainability of the program, training and input support was tailored to the particular profile of household members, and technologies were accompanied by a widespread climate change awareness program. The work in Gaibandha was partly inspired by bad flooding in 2007, which prompted organizations such as Practical Action to look into long-term methods of reducing vulnerability to inundation, as well short-term disaster relief (Rahman 2009). Villagers in Gaibandha use floating gardens to grow vegetables such as bitter gourds, green okra, and leafy greens, which provide subsistence for people even during the annual monga (period of food shortage). Indeed, in some cases, these vegetables also provide an alternative source of income when surplus is sold in the market. Because the rafts can be moved from place to place, they are also suitable for those who have temporarily or permanently lost their homes and land during increasingly severe flooding conditions. In the coastal areas of southern Bangladesh, one further threat of climate change is increasing salinity--the encroachment of salt water onto and beneath agricultural land. Saltwater makes it difficult to grow crops historically irrigated by fresh water, and it can accelerate the deterioration of buildings. In Mongla subdistrict, near the mangrove forests of the Sunderbans, villagers are responding to the threats of salinity by building houses on raised platforms and installing sealed containers of freshwater. Small containers-called mokti--areoften made of pottery and partly buried into the clay soil surrounding houses to provide reservoirs of freshwater for every house. Larger water tanks of plastic or even concrete are also installed near schools or in villager centers to provide a more communal and robust reservoir. The freshwater usually comes from rain that is channeled off roofs into containers. Some wealthier farmers are also converting old rice fields to fishponds and using these to fatten crabs for local restaurants or for consumption in Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital city. In the coastal district of Noakhali, South Bangladesh, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has been implementing the Promotion of Adaptation to Climate Change and Climate Variability Project, which aims in part to increase adaptive capacity at the community level. One community-based adaptation project under this

12 program involves raising and reinforcing homesteads to make them more resilient against flooding and cyclonic activity, reducing the need for people to flee their homes during extreme weather events and reducing losses. The project brings together a design team of local individuals engaged as village-level house-building specialists, architects, planners, an engineer, a geographer, architecture students from local universities, user groups, and local builders and carpenters to develop preliminary design options. The team selects one family in the community for whom to build the first demonstration house. Once built, a new local design and construction team is formed from the now-experienced local members of the first team, who move the project forward in their community, building other houses in the locality along with the house owners. House design is based on traditional cultural preferences but incorporate modest technological innovations that help strengthen or otherwise improve parts of the house that are particularly weak and vulnerable in the local climate. These include raising foundations, reinforcing house structures, and creating raised platforms within homes where people can take shelter during floods. Planting extensively along edges of homesteads is a local way of reducing wind impacts.

The Implications of Sea-level Rise for the Coastal Belt of Bangladesh: Limits to Community Based Adaptation
The coastal belt of Bangladesh is the site of many community-based adaptation programs that are responding to problems such as water-logging, salinity intrusion, and increasing storm and cyclone severity. But what are the implications of sea-level rise on this region for the sustainability of these projects in the longer term? Sea-level rise will result in more coastal flooding under ambient conditions and even more so in the event of storm surges. One prominent 2003 study suggests that a 1 meter rise in sea level would inundate 18 percent of Bangladesh's total land, directly threatening 11 percent of the country's population (Adger et al 2003) while a 2000 World Bank report suggests such a rise would flood 15-20 percent of the land mass and displace 20 million people, mainly from the southern coastal areas. These projections are very possible by the end of this century, with recent studies that factor in glacial melt suggesting rises of 0.8 to 2 meters by 2100. In addition, sea-level rise in conjunction with increased frequency and intensity of storms and cyclones has severe implications for coastal inundation in the region. A researcher at the Bangladesh Space Research and Remote Sensing Organization calculated the effect of 2 degrees Celsius warming on a repeat of the devastating 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh, which forced a 6 meter storm surge inland over a wide area, killing at least 138,000 people and leaving as many as 10 million homeless. In the face of such dire implications for the region, there is a sense that community-based adaptation initiatives such as floating gardens and reinforced housing, while undeniably contributing to the short-term adaptive capacity of a small number of people to current climate variability, can only prove a palliative solution for a small proportion of the threatened population. Community-based adaptation in the region is helping people cope with current climatic risks, which will in turn assist in building (or limit the loss of) assets and entitlements that can contribute to adaptive capacity over a longer time scale.

13 However, if they are not integrated into wider and more strategic policymaking processes that address the longer-term and wider-scale implications of climate change, such interventions can only be short term, assist a very small number of people in relation to the threatened population, and may result in only coping against risks that perhaps should be recognized as unmanageable without much larger interventions. Coping with added shocks and stresses implies that people are able to deal with these while maintaining their original (vulnerable) state but are not able to address the myriad challenges that constrain lives and livelihoods and make people vulnerable in the first place. Adaptation, on the other hand, suggests a process that reduces vulnerability and builds resilience to climatic stresses, facilitating more general improvements to the quality of human lives.

Challenges of Community Based Adaptation:

Both the authors of The Death of Environmentalism and the Yale report on climate change endorsed elevating adaptation as an issue. Their motivations were different; as Shellenberger and Nordhaus argued if the issue should even be defined as an environmental issue rather than a broader issue of protecting people. Why, for instance, is a human-made phenomenon like global warming -- which may kill hundreds of millions of human beings over the next century -- considered "environmental"? The Yale study argued that introducing the idea of adaptation might make mitigation seem more reasonable and move us beyond the debate over whether global warming is real. Adaptation planning could serve as a back door to a more reality-based dialogue about mitigating climate change in the first place. While community-based adaptation is seen a vital approach to addressing the vulnerability of communities, it also presents many challenges. For some analysts, it is unclear how much community-based adaptation differs from community-based "development" in general. This lack of distinction has presented problems for practitioners and funding bodies who require firmer signposts of successful communitybased adaptation projects to distinguish good practice. From a community-based adaptation standpoint, climatic changes are acknowledged by trying to understand locally observed, historic patterns of change in ways that are meaningful to local people. For some, this represents a strength of the approach, with proponents arguing that a focus on the underlying "drivers" of vulnerability so dependent on the development context represents a much-needed move away from an "impactsbased" approach. If climate change projections are not brought into community-based adaptation projects, then can they really be said to be addressing climate change, and hence be seen as legitimate approaches to climate change adaptation? These questions also influence how community-based adaptation should be funded. Some donors, such as the World Bank, have called for a greater involvement of official scientific assessments of climate change before using climate change funds for community-based adaptation. Another option is to fund it through official development assistance. This option raises further challenges, however, since it may then be competing with other local development priorities. Moreover, funding adaptation to climate change through official development assistance faces strong criticisms from developing countries,

14 who argue that climate change is another stressor on top of (albeit exacerbating) underdevelopment, and it should therefore be the responsibility of industrialized countries who have caused this problem to bear the brunt of the additional costs. Another common concern is how to make local lessons of community-based adaptation apply to wider spatial scales (a concept often called"upscaling"). NGOs and academic studies are currently identifying several examples of successful projects at the scale of a household, a village, or a collection of villages. But do these local, community-based initiatives offer lessons for how to adapt to climate change at the national scale, or in other countries? The contextual nature of community-based adaptation makes developing indicators or models problematic, risking the proliferation of a piecemeal approach that lacks clarity and fails to attract wider climate change and development investment. According to some analysts, the institutional design of community-based adaptation lies in the local deliberations that can identify development needs and cultural preferences, rather than the application of the same technologies or assumptions about livelihoods to different places. Indeed, one option is to take the existing development assistance known as the sustainable livelihoods approach and sensitize it to future climate risks. A sustainable livelihoods approach makes households more resilient to climate shocks either by using migration selectively or empowering households to intensify agriculture outputs and diversify economic activities. For example, in Mongla subdistrict of southern Bangladesh, some households are reducing their vulnerability to climate by gaining remittances from family members working in Dhaka and growing freshwater crops in the dry season and crabs in saltwater in the wet season. Addressing climate risk sometimes can mean reducing the dependency of income from agricultural or fishing-based activities. Perhaps the ultimate criticism of community-based adaptation is that it may not suffice in preventing some impacts of climate change. If current climate change policies fail to prolong atmospheric warming at just 2 degrees Celsius, and if warming approaches 4 degrees or more, then it is likely that large areas of land will, in time, be inundated with seawater. Relocation of villages would therefore be a reality. Community-based adaptation that does not incorporate detailed climate change information or communicate likely scenarios at the community level may discourage the kind of technological or engineering-based approaches to adaptation that a community-based approach seeks to supplement. Perversely, this could lead to a situation in which larger-scale strategic adaptation options that respond directly to future climate change scenarios are alienated even more from the communities they affect because a lack of awareness of the need for such programs will make participation with local people problematic. Some analysts call this mismatch of expectations a form of maladaptation. In Bangladesh, such issues are particularly poignant because many communities undertaking community-based adaptation are located in areas threatened by inundation . Over the years, donor agencies have shown an interest in investing in community-based adaptation, recognizing that it is a valid approach to building adaptive capacity in vulnerable communities. For example, at the Third International Community-Based

15 Adaptation Workshop in Dhaka in February 2009, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations announced the possibility of providing funding for small-scale community-based adaptation projects, while other donors--including the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme, UK Department for International Development, and Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency--were actively engaged in conference discussions on the best way to achieve donor support for community-based adaptation. For a developing country like Bangladesh, community based adaptation approach is heavily dependent on foreign aid donors. There are evidences that donors have already failed to disburse funds they pledged--which are adversely impacting upon the sustainability of the projects undertaken for adaptation. Even in case where funds flow for adaptation, they are to flow to government. Now those most affected by climate change are often remote, poor rural communities. Government does not have a good record of channeling money to their most remote or vulnerable citizens. In addition, it is evident that when the government think about adaptation, it is considering the need to modify infrastructure, or make changes to export agriculture, or provide for additional health risks, rather than supporting vulnerable communities. There must be an effective mechanism in place to oversee of how international adaptation funds are disbursed and spent, to ensure that they achieve the objective of enabling adaptation. Existing institutional designs for adaptation generally focus either at the national level through National Adaptation Programmers of Action (NAPAs), or comprise of community-based adaptation initiatives that have tended to take a projectised approach and are detached from broader climate and development policy contexts. The development of NGO interest in climate change adaptation has come with an introduction of new institutional and management frameworks which have added responsibilities and perhaps further confusion at local community level. Among the many institutional arrangements introduced are democratically elected sectoral committees and NGO based committees. However, these have often ignored existing informal institutions and traditional leadership. The proliferation and multiplicity of committees poses challenges in effective implementation of community based climate change adaptation programmes and projects. The major challenges that surround the community based climate change adaptation programme/projects are as follows: The projects are heavily dependent on and influenced by the external agencies donors and

They lack coordination and integration amongst the key policies and institutions The interventions not grounded in the local communities Interventions often externally imposed, not grown from an indigenous need or drive

16 Community organisations often remain weak dimming the prospect of long term sustainability of the interventions Degree of community participation is low There are difficulties in generating local funds Generally inadequate flow of fund for community level activities Indigenous knowledge remains often neglected and/or untapped Interventions remain often palliative in nature Reactive actions, rather than a proactive approach

Concluding Remarks: Need for a Balancing Strategy

In a recent interview by John Holdren, science advisor to US President Obama states: Mitigation alone wont work because the climate is already changing. Were already experiencing impacts from that. Nothing we can do in the mitigation domain can stop it overnight. And so a mitigation-only strategy would be insanity. "Adaptation alone wont work. Adaptation alone wont work because adaptation gets more difficult, more expensive, and less effective the larger are the changes in climate to which we are trying to adapt. If you live on an island that is one meter above sea level and the sea level goes up two meters, adaptation is no longer the question. You are dealing with evacuation. Clearly, what we need is enough mitigation to limit changes in climate to a level with which adaptation can largely cope. The question is whether we have the political and social will to do enough of the former in sufficient time to make the latter actually achievable. Crucial in this is the role of the somewhat overlooked virtue of prudence, wise consideration of the future. Whether our political and economic systems are designed to encourage this virtue in our leaders that remain to be seen. In recent years, what we see is that mitigation efforts are being downplayed and emphasis is now more on the community based approach as it is imposed on the poor developing countries by the richer countries. The over-emphasis on the community based adaptation to climate change relative to mitigation can be seen from a political economy perspective. This approach can redress the immediate grievances of the climate change affected or vulnerable poor population. And this is how it can be seen as a process of social engineering through which the affected or the vulnerable peoples discontents are addressed to some extent and it also suits the developed nations as it helps them getting relieved from their immediate obligation for mitigation.

17 The Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama while addressing the group of young students, very precisely characterized the 20th century, as period of immense destructions, human sufferings and serious and unprecedented environmental damages. He maintained that 21st century obviously continues these legacies and realities but in this context he urged to make 21st century a century of dialogue and reconciliation. According to Dalai Lama, As a human being we have quite enough intelligence to analyze and understand our past mistakes. Basically many of the problems which we are facing are man-made, so human beings also have the ability to make corrections, or at least minimize the problems we are facing. In the words of Gerald A. Larue, The 21st century promises to be a time of scientific and technological growth at a level never before experienced in human history. This growth will either trigger chaos, disruption, war, starvation and disease or will introduce a period of humanistic cooperation, development, progress, and peace. What emerges will depend upon which values are embraced, taught, encouraged, and legislated. The value choices, which must be deliberately chosen and not left to chance, must be secular, global and familial. The accepted values must be embraced, taught, encouraged, and supported internationally, nationally, locally, and internationally. We can not turn our back on consumerism completely, also we can not underestimate the importance of market. But we need to know out limits, we need to understand where to draw the line, we must not forget about the value premise if we are to effectively deal with the problems we are encountered with . I believe that the environmental and humanitarian communities must forge a partnership that can provide a model of how a response to global climate change can balance the needs of varying constituencies and build a movement that can create meaningful solutions to this global problem. The environmental community lacks the political clout to bring about the change required to respond to global climate change and by failing to identify and act on how to protect impacted communities has abandoned an essential area of activism. The humanitarian community has minimized the enormous implications global climate change has on the human agenda and has only begun to work on limiting exposure to climactic disasters, very recently. Without a common framework for these to be connected, neither community will be successful in their agendas or mobilize the change needed to protect either vulnerable ecosystems or vulnerable peoples.

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