Climate Change Vulnerability and Resilience of People Living in the Polder Area of Khulna Division and Assessment of Locally-Led Adaptation (LLA)

Bangladesh is likely to be one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change due to geographical location and geomorphological conditions. Bangladesh experiences extremely disastrous situations like cyclones, floods, saline water intrusion, waterlogging, heavy rainfall, river erosion, storm surge, etc. that occur frequently in the coastal part of Bangladesh. This result in huge loss of lives damages properties and degrades the integrity of the environmental components. Bangladesh’s physical and cultural characteristics as well as the livelihoods of its people are defined by the GBM delta, which is endowed with an abundance of natural resources. The dynamically evolving coastal landscape of Bangladesh is controlled by the underlying geology and topography of the delta and the dynamic interaction between the influx of water and sediment, the coastal processes such as tides and wave action, and episodic events such as cyclones and monsoons. In Khulna Division, there are several polders. We have selected 04 polders for our study named: 7/1,7/2, 10-12, and 13-14/2. The flood damage information was collected from several household-level surveys which were caused by various Cyclonic events in these regions by using KOBO Toolbox. Then the data was used to prepare various flood damage curves to show the quantity of loss & damage of these polders people due to various Cyclonic events in the last 20 years. In parallel, the Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) practices were collected along the selected polders boundary by using FGD where a discussion was arranged with people to know the damages and how they are using their knowledge for making the decisions themselves. The focus is on the Local people Engagement of these polders in planning, implementation, and monitoring to manage the risks and challenges faced by the people due to climate change by predicting flood inundation in the upcoming years according to the report of IPCC. The inundation rate has been analyzed using ArcGIS. After that a fuzzy model was developed through MATLAB to predict the damage rate for 2100 due to sea level rise. Also, a detailed assessment was done about the gaps for the implementation of Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) among polders people and a way forward to develop them to prepare against the cyclones & floods due to Climate Change and Sea Level Rise (SLR).