The raging ‘beast’

As far as the eye can see, the riverbank resembles the jagged edge of a saw. As if, an enormous beast has mercilessly raked the shoreline with its claw. Signs of devastation are everywhere along the riverbank: remnant of a paddy field, ruin of a family burial ground, an abandoned village market. The beast that has been ravaging this locality in the coastal district of Barguna in Southern Bangladesh is the river Bishkhali. The brackish water of Bishkhali surges more than five feet than its regular height during each monsoon season. However, this height has been increasing in recent years due to extreme rainfall, a phenomenon, directly linked to climate change according to the experts.

“That is where my land was. Bishkhali has eaten it,” said Sohrab Uddin, 53, pointing at a patch of the river, on a recent autumn afternoon. A father of three, Sohrab produced multiple crops year round on his land and earned just enough to support his five-member family. However, after he lost his livelihood to the encroaching river, he began working as a day laborer in a brickfield to keep his family fed. Last year, Sohrab’s older daughter, who was in 9^th grade, dropped out of school and started working as a domestic assistant in a nearby town to provide extra income to her family. But, in last May, when cyclone Fani, another extreme weather event that is increasing in frequency and intensity in South Asia due to climate change, damaged the roof of his house, Sohrab couldn’t keep his head above water anymore. He had to take out multiple loans from formal and informal sources on high interest rates to repair his dilapidated house. The monetary assistance he received from the government after the cyclone was not enough to pay for the repair costs. “I do not know how I am going to repay all these debts. I may have to move to Dhaka in search of a better income”.

Sohrab Uddin’s misfortune is not an isolated event. Rural households across the country are being most affected by calamities brought by climate change and are left alone to combat them.  According to a recently published study by London based policy research institute International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) hailed as the first of its kind, rural families in Bangladesh are shelling out a whopping US$ 2 billion a year on average to address the impacts of climate change.

Key Findings

In Bangladesh, the discussion around climate financing has been so far centered on funding provided by Bangladesh Government and international donors. Contribution by rural households- who are the direct sufferers of climate change- have largely been absent from the discussion. However, according to the IIED report, not only does do the rural households spend a substantial amount of money in disaster responses, they spend far more than the Bangladesh government and the international donors combined. In 2015-16 fiscal year, government spent US$0.88 billion for climate disaster in rural Bangladesh while the multinational donors shelled out around US$ 154 million. Thus in absolute terms, rural household spending in climate and disaster risk reduction is more than twice that of the government spending and 12 times higher than the international financing. The study also finds that household with female heads spend as much as male headed households. However, since females earn significantly less than males, as a share of income female-headed households spend three times more than male-headed ones.

Poorest hit hardest

Bangladesh, one of the most vulnerable nations to the impacts of climate change, is also one of the most impoverished ones. According to the World Bank, 1 in 4 people still live in poverty in Bangladesh while 12% of the population live in extreme poverty. Although rural poverty rate has taken a nosedive in recent years, still more poor people live in rural areas than in urban areas. According to UNDP, rural Bangladeshis earn just over half the national average.

This means the poorest in Bangladesh are bearing the cost of climate change most. Already impoverished families in rural Bangladesh are spending money on repairing damaged properties and replacing animals, which they could have used to buy food for their family or pay for their children’s education and healthcare.

“This research reveals an alarming imbalance. It is unacceptable that the poorest people are shouldering the burden of spending for adapting to climate change in Bangladesh,” IIED director Andrew Norton said in a press release.

Atiq Rahman, a Bangladeshi expert who was one of the lead authors of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told AFP after the report was published that, while the report is an welcoming step, US$ 2 billion was “a fraction of the amount” Bangladeshis and the government spend every year.

“This is an underestimate. There are many climate change-related costs that cannot be easily monetized,” he told, citing the impacts on health, land productivity and livestock.

The Way Forward

Bangladesh government has taken a number of positive steps in terms of both climate change mitigation and adaptation, starting with the creation of the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP) nearly ten years ago. It was also one of the first governments to form a Climate Change Trust Fund (CCTF) from its own resources to fight the impacts of climate change. However, being a low-income country, its ability to tackle climate change on its own is limited.

At COP15 in 2009, rich countries promised to raise US$ 100 a year by 2020 to help poor countries like Bangladesh fight climate change and a year later Green Climate Fund (GCF) was stablished. However, so far the rich countries have fallen short of their promise. A quick glance at GCF website in late 2019 reveals that it has little more than 100 projects in its portfolio valued at nearly US$ 20 billion.

While rich countries have failed in their promise, governments of poor countries have also their own failure in directing climate finance to local level, according to experts. Dr Saleemul Huq, director of International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) told yesterday to a Bangladeshi daily Dhaka Tribune that only 2% of the global funds reach the most poor and needy people in Bangladesh.

Abdullah Mamun, an expert on poverty in rural Bangladesh said, in the upcoming COP25, to be held in Madrid, Spain from 2-13 December, Bangladesh government has the opportunity to highlight the plight of rural Bangladeshis on the face of climate change. “At the same time Bangladesh can also raise its voice to hold rich countries accountable to their promise,” he added.

I produced this report as part of my successful application to the Columbia University’s M.S. in Data Journalism program for the classs of 2021