Appraising Climate Change Impact Mitigation Standards to Ground Realities: The Lessons From Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Funded Projects

Abstract

Increase in disaster risk has been a recurrent phenomenon throughout the world. Unique physiographic feature, location and different socio economic factors have made Bangladesh extremely prone to climate change and consequent diversified natural hazards. It is a matter of regret that till now our country is not fully resilient in the struggle with reducing the disastrous effects of climate change. The Government of Bangladesh has undertaken Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP) in 2009, which incorporates six pillars concepts for mitigating the impacts of climate change. The Government has also established the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund (BCCTF) based on revenue from the national budget to ensure the implementation of these six pillars. BCCTF funded projects are distributed among different government organizations like Local Government Engineering Department (LGED), Department of Relief and Rehabilitation, Bangladesh Water Development Board, SPARSO and many others. About 236 projects have been allotted by the fund of BCCTF till 2014. This particular study focuses on investigating the available BCCTF (Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund) projects for climate change effect mitigation on the basis of the six pillars of BCCSAP, 2009. Among 236 projects of BCCTF till 2014, 151 available projects have been analyzed depending on their objectives and addressing themes. As a key finding, this study revealed that the collected projects predominantly focused on the infrastructure development that is the third pillar of BCCSAP, 2009 while ignoring the others one.