Development and Climate Change in Bangladesh. Focus on Coastal Flooding and the Sundarbans

This document is an output from the OECD Development and Climate Change project, an activity jointly overseen by the EPOC Working Party on Global and Structural Policies (WPGSP), and the DAC Network on Environment and Development Co-operation (ENVIRONET). The overall objective of the project is to provide guidance on how to mainstream responses to climate change within economic development planning and assistance policies, with natural resource management as an overarching theme. This report presents the integrated case study for Bangladesh carried out under an OECD project on Development and Climate Change. The report is structured around a three-tiered framework. First, recent climate trends and climate change scenarios for Bangladesh are assessed and key sectoral impacts are identified and ranked along multiple indicators to establish priorities for adaptation. Second, donor portfolios in Bangladesh are analyzed to examine the proportion of development assistance activities affected by climate risks. A desk analysis of donor strategies and project documents as well as national plans is conducted to assess the degree of attention to climate change concerns in development planning and assistance. Third, an in-depth analysis is conducted for coastal zones, particularly the coastal mangroves - the Sundarbans - which have been identified as particularly vulnerable to climate change.