Climate change induced risks assessment of a coastal area: A “socioeconomic and livelihood vulnerability index” based study in coastal Bangladesh

Abstract

While climate change impacts the entire world, the people of Bangladesh bear a disproportionately heavy burden. Situated at the forefront of extreme climatic events such as cyclone, flood, saltwater intrusion, drought, and heavy rainfall, they face severe vulnerabilities. Coastal communities have been facing climate change impacts and livelihood threats for some time now. Hatiya – a coastal Upazila (sub-district) of the Noakhali District in Bangladesh faced extreme climatic and socio-economic challenges in the recent past. To understand the climate change-induced risks and vulnerabilities of Hatiya Upazila, it is vital to understand the socioeconomic and livelihood vulnerability index of this area. In this study, the Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI), Socioeconomic Vulnerability Index (SeVI) and Livelihood Vulnerability Index-Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change ​(LVI-IPCC) vulnerability index have been analyzed to evaluate the impacts of climate change on the livelihood and socioeconomic profile of the affected communities of Hatiya. A total of 150 household surveys and 11 Focus Group Discussions have been conducted in Hatiya Upazila for this purpose following purposive random sampling. The collected data included livelihood strategies, social network & communications, food, health, water, social, economic, physical, and climatic disaster & variability. All these vulnerability indicators were divided into 7 sub-components of LVI, and 5 subcomponents of SeVI, forming indicators to measure the desired vulnerability index. The index was formed by three IPCC endorsed climate change vulnerability indicators i.e., exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. The LVI value of Hatiya Upazila was found to be 0.495, which indicated that Hatiya has a medium vulnerability in terms of livelihood. Based on the weighted average scores, Hatiya was found to be the most vulnerable due to natural hazards (0.729), while indicators within this domain revealed that the highest percentage (64.6%) of households lost their property and other resources during natural hazards. In addition, Hatiya possessed a high level of socio-economic vulnerability (0.704). Livelihood Strategies become less diversified with the increased deterioration rate of natural resources such as fishing, agriculture, forest resources, etc. Most of the households were found to have weak Social Network & Communications as they did not go to the local government or others for any kind of help, so the score for these components (0.722) was in the highly vulnerable range of LVI. However, the LVI-IPCC value of the study area was 0.027, indicating medium vulnerability. The SeVI index value for Hatiya Upazila was 0.704 which indicated high vulnerability and social, and economic vulnerability mostly influenced by natural hazards. The average indexed values of the three LVI-IPCC climate change contributing factors such as adaptive capacity, exposure, and sensitivity of Hatiya Upazila were 0.631, 0.573, and 0.465 respectively. This study can be a baseline for vulnerability assessment of climate change-affected communities in coastal Bangladesh and the government can take proper initiatives to facilitate adaptive capacity to reduce the climate change vulnerability of the local communities.