Bangladesh: Climate change adaptation actions deliver results for nearly 2 million people

On the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, the LoCAL Team is pleased to share the progress achieved in Bangladesh, where the Local Climate Adaptative Living Facility has delivered a series of small-scale interventions with big impacts for almost 2 million people in Bangladesh. In one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change, the LoCAL mechanism has proved a valuable means of bolstering resilience and delivering adaptation measures that work for communities, including their most vulnerable members.

“Implementation of LoCAL in Bangladesh clearly demonstrated how the mechanism can be adapted to meet very specific local needs while at the same time strengthening local government capacities and their existing systems of operation,” said Sophie de Coninck, LoCAL Facility Manager. “We hope other countries will look to the experience of Bangladesh as a model for how LoCAL can really work to deliver climate resilience for communities and by communities.”

Climate change is expected to lead to a rise in sea level and surface temperatures with devastating consequences for Bangladesh, which sits on the low-lying delta of two of the largest rivers on the Indian sub-continent. One of the most densely populated countries in the world, the impact of extreme climatic events like floods and cyclones, threaten the lives of many of its 160+ million population. Local governments at both the ‘upazil’ (sub-district) and ‘union parishad’ (grassroots) level have been mandated to perform several key functions related to disaster preparedness and management, receiving fiscal transfers for infrastructure development and the delivery of services.

Climate change is expected to lead to a rise in sea level and surface temperatures with devastating consequences for Bangladesh, which sits on the low-lying delta of two of the largest rivers on the Indian sub-continent.

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LoCAL in Bangladesh works with these local governments to ensure that their planning and investments are climate change resilient. LoCAL is a global mechanism, that is flexible and can be adapted to local needs, priorities and limitations. In Bangladesh this means that the LoCAL mechanism has been embraced as part of the Local Government Initiative on Climate change, known briefly as LoGIC.

Implementation of LoCAL in Bangladesh clearly demonstrated how the mechanism can be adapted to meet very specific local needs while at the same time strengthening local government capacities

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The LoGIC project is funded by the Swedish Development agency SIDA and the European Union, with some input from UNDP and UNCDF, uses LoCAL’s system of Performance Based Resilience Grants to channel additional resources to local governments and support their locally identified projects with technical support and capacity building.

PBCRGs provide a financial top-up to cover the additional costs of making local investments climate resilient and are channelled through existing government fiscal transfer systems. The grants include minimum conditions, performance measures and a menu of eligible investments. Bangladesh first embraced the LoCAL mechanism in 2014 with the roll of PBRGs in just three local governments.

But that quickly expanded with the country consolidating take-up so that today 72 local governments are tackling locally identified actions through LoCAL’s system of PBRG. As of January 2020, a total of 228 small-scale climate resilience schemes had delivered direct results for 279,714 people and indirectly for 1,576,981 more.

Most common actions identified by local governments and funded through PBRGs included:

- Non-soil-based food production, or hydroponics

- Water filtration systems

- Water collection tanks

- Culverts to manage tidal surges

- Infrastructure development

- Agriculture irrigation

Other activities included road elevation, repair of cyclone shelter, rainwater harvesting, pond filtering and desalinization, solar power systems, flood defence walls, tree plantation, and more. The schemes paid attention to extremely vulnerable groups, such as communities already displaced due to climate change, ethnic minority groups and women.