Climate Change Mainstreaming Challenges in Bangladesh Governance

The paper examined Bangladesh’s integration of climate change issues into its national, sectoral, and city development plans, focusing on Dhaka’s local city plans.

Bangladesh is a developing country and has been identified as one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change effects. Dhaka is one of the fastest-growing cities in Southern Asia as a whole.

The city has a population of 19.5 million and is surrounded by tributaries of the rivers of the Bengal Delta, which almost ensures that climate change impacts will be devastating. The city is also experiencing temperature variations, excessive and erratic rainfall, flooding, and cyclones.

In the last 30 years, Bangladesh has implemented several initiatives to address the impacts of climate change, and the paper finds that “mainstreaming of climate change is strong in national and sectoral development plans” and has been growing yearly since 2002.  

However, climate mainstreaming in Dhaka’s city development plan has been “moderate, especially in terms of climate risk and opportunity assessment, institutional arrangement, and capacity building for climate action.”

Looking at Dhaka, the paper says there is a need to systematically address the challenges of institutional coordination, identify and tap climate finance opportunities, and improve climate capacity-building strategies.

The inadequate institutional capacity at the local level seems typical in most Asian countries, which is also true for Bangladesh, the paper observes.

The paper concludes:

“For developing countries and cities to address the localized impacts of climate change, there is a need for comprehensive and coordinated efforts at climate change mainstreaming at all levels of planning and development. This requires building sub-national level capacity for climate change mainstreaming through skill training, professional development for staff and logistical support for institutions to carry out effective climate risks and opportunities assessments.”

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