School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts Department of Social Sciences and International Studies Community Perceptions and Adaptation to Climate Change in Coastal Bangladesh M. Mokhlesur Rahman This thesis is presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Curtin University March 2014 i Dedicated to My parents ii Declaration To the best of my knowledge and belief this thesis contains no material previously published by any other person except where due acknowledgement has been made. This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university. Signature: ………………………………………………….. Date: ………1 January 2015…………………………………………. iii Acknowledgements The huge task of completing a doctoral thesis obviously demands the support and encouragement of many - from family, friends, and colleagues and more importantly from supervisors. Throughout my journey towards this accomplishment my wife Runa has been the great source of encouragement to fulfill the dream of my father who wanted to see all his children become highly educated but who died when I was in primary school. My mother who died at 101 in October 2013 allowed me to come to Australia in my effort to fulfill my father’s dream. My children were always considerate of the separation from my family for the sake of my study but were curious about what it could bring me at the end. Professor Bob Pokrant, my supervisor, all along has been a guide and often a critic of my quick conclusions on various aspects of the interim research findings. He always encouraged me to be critical while reaching conclusions on issues and taught me that human societies consist of people caught up in complex webs of socio- political relations and diverse meanings, which become ever more complex when we seek to embed those relations and meanings within coupled social ecological systems. My supervisor’s philosophical guidance both enlightened me and sharpened my analytical capacity to focus on the tasks indispensable to complete my journey that I started four years back. Bob, like a mysterious but life saving lighthouse, helped me to explore unknown intellectual waters and guided me back to shore. I am grateful to Bob for his encouragement and guidance as my supervisor as well as his confidence in my ability to carry out research work of this magnitude. I am also thankful to my thesis committee for the facilitation and support required to accomplish this research work. I wish to express my gratitude to Curtin’s post graduate office administrators and to the Department of Social Sciences and International Studies for providing administrative and logistical support in carrying out the research. I also thankfully acknowledge the help of Britt Pokrant, wife of my Supervisor, who emailed me some useful reference materials on Bangladesh during the thesis writing. I conducted my field research in a remote coastal setting of southwest Bangladesh and collected a large data set from both men and women of the communities of two iv villages (Fultala and Chakbara) under Shyamnagar sub-district of Satkhira district. They gave me their full support and gave up their valuable time to provide me with various data and information. Without their contribution, the thesis would not have been possible and I thank them sincerely. My research assistants, Shahidul Islam Sharif, Nur Hossain and Pintu Biswas of the Center for Natural Resources Studies (CNRS) contributed greatly to the thesis through their understanding of the local contexts of the research and their capacity to gather field data often under difficult circumstances. I am indebted to them. I acknowledge the time that local government officials, primary school teachers and field staff of NGOs sacrificed in responding to questionnaire surveys and KIIs. To Shaidul Islam, data entry operator of CNRS, who shouldered a huge burden in entering all the quantitative raw data into computer and to Fakrul Islam, IT Manager of CNRS, who analysed the data and produced reports despite their busy schedules, I give my sincere thanks. I express my sincere thanks to my long term colleagues and friends at CNRS, Anisul Islam, Shachin Halder, Mahbubul Hasan and Masood Siddique for their encouragements and support during field work and in the interpretation and write-up phase of thesis writing. Tajnin and Tariqul Islam, GIS Analysts of CNRS, are thanked for their time in preparing GIS maps for the thesis. The contribution of Hafizur Rahman of CNRS who conducted field level mapping of various aspects of the two study villages is gratefully acknowledged. Finally, I express my sincere thanks to Dr. Dewan Ashraf, Lecturer in Spatial Sciences at Curtin University and to Mr. Rashedul Hassan, Doctoral student in the same department for their day to day encouragement and sharing of relevant reference materials on Bangladesh which was useful for completing my thesis. v Abstract This study examines the ways in which the inhabitants of two coastal communities of southwestern Bangladesh perceive and encounter weather /climate related hazards in their everyday lives. The study villages border the Sundarbans Reserved Forest – the world’s largest single unit of mangroves, which is exposed to various climate related hazards such as cyclones, storm surges, sea level rise, salinity intrusion and erosion. It explores local people’s understanding of changing weather patterns and related impacts on their local environments and livelihoods and the measures they undertake to adapt to such impacts. The study also examines within resilience and transformation frameworks the effectiveness and sustainability of such community level adaptation measures in response to the impacts and uncertainties associated with current and future climate and non-climate related stressors. The study analyses the impacts of various past development interventions, such as coastal polders, upstream river water diversions, shrimp farming, conversions and privatization of canals and rivers on local environment and livelihoods and their implications for weather/climate induced vulnerabilities. A mix of qualitative (focused group discussions, key informants interview, trend analyses, case studies) and quantitative (household census, questionnaire survey, knowledge attitude and practice survey) approaches was employed to gather data from various occupational groups, local government representatives, NGO staff and primary schools teachers. A Livelihood Vulnerability Index tool was employed to analyse the climate vulnerability of the study communities. Land use and GIS mapping was done to measure village changes in resource systems over time. Field surveys were aided by two part-time research assistants and field study findings were supplemented by desk-based reviews of relevant literatures. Field findings revealed the study area was impacted by various exogenous and endogenous past development interventions that had increased the risks and magnitude of weather/ climate change impacts on local social-ecological systems. Local people observed warmer and longer summers with erratic rainfall and shorter and warmer winters, frequent rough sea conditions. They understood these changes to be both historically grounded and relatively new and linked to both weather- vi related and non-weather-related processes in the local environment. Thus, corrupt practices and poor maintenance of embankments intensified the impact of cyclonic activity while over-fishing, poor management of fish sanctuaries in the Sundarban, and official failure to implement fish conservation acts combined with prolonged pre/early monsoon drought in affecting fish migration, low recruitment and lower yields. The two villages, while geographically close to each other, showed differences in their perceptions and concerns about climate related stressors. Social vulnerabilities were shaped by geographical location, socio-economic conditions, local resource systems, land uses, livelihood options, and access to resources and institutional governance, which interacted with biophysical hazards to bring about variations in local people’s capacity to respond to such hazards. Community adaptation initiatives to weather stressors were mostly short term and resilience-based rather than medium to longer term transitional or transformative forms. Some initiatives (water management and rice, wetland and mangrove restorations) were based on ecosystems approaches to adaptation with potential to benefit communities in a changing climate. A lack of awareness, capacity and focus on weather/climate change, institutional weakness, poor governance and a lack of local readiness to adapt were barriers to translating local adaptive capacity into actual adaptation. The study suggests that a combination of community-based adaptation (CBA) and a focus on ecosystems based approaches (EbA) that go beyond a traditional resilience framework may help local communities to deal sustainably with weather and non-weather stressors in the longer term. This requires a more proactive role by government agencies, NGOs and local government with the active participation of local communities to make transformational change in the face of climate change impacts. vii Glossary of Terms and Acronym Abohawa : Weather (In Bengali) ADB : Asian Development Bank Akash bonnaya : Localised flooding due to intense heavy rains over consecutive few days Amabotir joe : Heavy rains in early ashar (during 2-10th of ashar that enrich soil moisture suitable for tilling) Amon rice : Rain-fed