Index based climate vulnerability assessment for Hatiya of Noakhali of Bangladesh

Abstract

Climate change is the major threat to Bangladesh, and the elongated coastline is the primary victim of the climate extremes. Geographically Bangladesh is at critical location to be vulnerable to climate change. The impact of climate change has been increasing day by day, and the measuring local impact or vulnerability is essential to plan coping strategy. At global scale, there are several tools and techniques to measure vulnerability, whereas country specific tool is absent for Bangladesh. For developing an effective tool to measure vulnerability, Hatiya was selected to conduct the study as vulnerable location. The method of quantifying climate vulnerability index (CVI) has two separate parts- a) assessing the exposure (climate threat) by analyzing historical and regional climate model data, b) the other part is assessing the resilience and adaptability through participatory process and their future projections. Impact of climate change or the climate threat index (CTI) or exposure is calculated from observed (historical) and model data for baseline (2010) and projected 3 future so called time-slices of each 30 years period (i.e. 2020s, 2050s, and 2080s). The participatory results for resilience and adaptability are also projected to the same timeslices. Finally, the CVI is measured with a comprehensive empirical formula using the all three sub-indices. The results are denoted in the scale of 0 to 1, which means the minimum value of CVI could be 0 and the maximum value could be 1. The result of this study coincides with the general perception of vulnerability. The value of CVI from observed data is similar to the model data. On the other hand, model data have given regular incremental trends of CVI for a particular location. The least vulnerable location of Hatiya is Sonadia and most vulnerable location is Nalchira. Physical exposure and socio-cultural cohesions were the major impacted factors for determining CVI for different locations of Hatiya. The study also revealed that better access to resources or facilities does not necessarily mean that the locations are less vulnerable and have high adaptability and resilience because the socio-cultural and natural variables have significant impacts on vulnerability. This comprehensive approach may be used to assess the vulnerability of data-scarce communities or systems for designing initiatives to reduce the vulnerability of climate change.