Bangladesh’s Climate Change Action Plan: A Comprehensive Summary

In response to worsening climate change, nations around the world have developed climate action plans. A climate action plan is a set of goals and initiatives created by national governments to adapt to and mitigate climate change. Each has its own set of benchmarks to reach by a certain date.

Background Info: What Are Climate Action Plans?

Climate action plans have been created worldwide to reduce excessive resource use, find renewable and alternative energy, and overall decrease the disastrous effects on the earth’s climate.

In this article, we’ll take a look at Bangladesh’s climate action plan and its goals.

Table of Contents

Summary: Bangladesh’s Climate Change Action Plan

Main Pillars of the Plan

1. Social, health, and food
2. Disaster management
3. Infrastructure
4. Research and awareness
5. Low-carbon development and climate change mitigation
6. Building capacity and institutional strength

Bangladesh’s Modern Climate Goals: Carbon Reduction and International Cooperation

Summary: Bangladesh’s Climate Change Action Plan

While Bangladesh is not one of the bigger carbon emission contributors worldwide, it is a nation suffering the effects of sweeping climate change. Weather and natural disasters are exacerbated by the effects of climate warming, like flooding or cyclones. The country strives to mitigate these effects and set a standard to follow.

The country of Bangladesh’s initial goals and climate plan were first created in 2008 under the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (CCSAP). The plan laid out goals they hoped to achieve in the 20-25 years beyond 2008.

The main tenets of the plan are as follows:

1. Develop adaptive, low-carbon technology that scales with the growth and development of the country
2. Create and establish the National Climate Change Fund
3. Implement the plan through a National Environment Council
4. Establish “Six Pillars” that serve as primary goals of the plan:
   1. Ensure food security, social welfare, and health
   2. Create comprehensive disaster management plans
   3. Build climate resilient infrastructure
   4. Perform ongoing climate research
   5. Mitigate climate change and increase low-carbon initiatives
   6. Strengthen institutional capacity to respond to climate change

Achieving success through these pillars requires both planning and capital. For instance, to fund major changes in both infrastructure and climate action development, Bangladesh established the National Climate Change Fund with an initial budget of $45 million. However, the budget is also dependent on the aid and assistance of international entities.

Read the full plan: Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan

Main Pillars of the Bangladesh Climate Change Action Plan

Since each “pillar” is its own category, the plan or actual actions taken vary based on each category. In Bangladesh’s CCSAP, they breakdown each section with specific goals:

1. Social, health, and food

This pillar focuses on increasing the resilience of vulnerable people like women, children, and the elderly by increasing access to social services and scaling safety nets. That also includes modernizing agriculture to adapt to potential climate changes like warming and flooding in order to prioritize aid for impoverished farmers affected by climate change.. 

Another priority of the social pillar is maintaining enough clean, drinkable water for areas potentially affected by drought or flooding.

2. Disaster management

As a country that is already affected by climate change and its accompanying natural disasters, Bangladesh has to prepare for the inevitable worsening of climate-driven disasters. The disaster management pillar addresses this.

The plan dictates the creation of community and civil management in the event of disaster to reduce panic and maintain order. Those management chains are also intended to uphold regulatory standards for climate change.

The plan also emphasizes a need to update and upgrade weather alert systems for severe storms like cyclones, storms, and flood surges. This warning will help reduce the severity of natural disasters’ impacts.

3. Infrastructure

Bangladesh’s climate change action plan emphasizes a strong need to maintain the country’s infrastructure to ensure climate resilience (especially riverbanks and coastal embankments).

The overall goal of this pillar is to repair and maintain infrastructure while maintaining “effective operation” of current structures. The plan also emphasizes a need to create new emergency infrastructure such as drainage systems, shelters, water management systems, and river erosion control.

4. Research and awareness

The climate plan emphasizes a strong need to continuously maintain updated research on climate change. The research focuses on how climate change impacts the country and the world, while working to understand long term impacts. Ongoing research will help the country better understand climate change and its impacts, and thus will help the country respond more effectively and efficiently.

The plan for the “research” pillar includes the development of scientific models. These models are designed to create theoretical situations of how climate change will impact Bangladesh. Some models include predictions for how climate change will impact specific, important infrastructure like the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna system, which is designed to regulate river levels.

The pillar also puts emphasis on researching how climate change impacts the impoverished and poor, how it impacts the economy, and the ways it exacerbates problems like disease.

5. Low-carbon development and climate change mitigation

Though Bangladesh’s carbon footprint is incredibly low, their plan highlights ways to continuously reduce it.

The plan calls for the creation of investment portfolios for national energy budgets. It also includes plans to expand the planting of coastal trees and expanding forests/forest programs in order to sequester more atmospheric carbon and slow climate change.

Lastly, the pillar’s goal is to incentivize growth for low-carbon energy while reviewing tech policies to assure all development is low-carbon.

6. Building capacity and institutional strength

This pillar seeks to strengthen government agencies, ministries, and civil society. The goal of this pillar is to review government and institutional policies to make sure they’re upholding regulations that account for climate change.

Any plan or goal that includes energy, infrastructure, or climate must maintain a low-carbon goal while also minding the needs of civilians and vulnerable who are most impacted by climate change. This pillar not only ensures that the government is enforcing climate legislation, but also seeks to ensure that the government takes into account the social effects of its plan.

This pillar of Bangladesh’s climate change action plan also establishes the need to create and maintain government ministries devoted to carrying out this plan, including: 

1. Ministry of Food and Disaster Management
2. Bangladesh Water Development Board
3. Local Government Engineering Department
4. National Agricultural Research System

Bangladesh’s Modern Climate Goals: Carbon Reduction and International Cooperation

Bangladesh continuously strives to cut its emissions and discover new ways to avoid high carbon loads, even though it’s one of the world’s lowest global producers. In fact, the country has set a new goal to reduce carbon emissions by 90 million tons at the end of 2030. To do so, they’re looking to cut emissions used in nearly all of their major infrastructure.

Around 96 percent of this target will focus on energy, homes, businesses, and transportation, with the rest focused on forestry and farming. Experts have cautioned that a global temperature increase of at least 1.5C will cause irreversible, long-term damage, and Bangladesh hopes to meet the 1.5C (or lower) criterion with its carbon-cutting. 

Bangladesh has continuously maintained a climate aware model, meaning their infrastructure, education, and design all have Earth’s future in mind. More so, they continue to call on international partnership and cooperation to truly achieve long term success. 

Once again, Bangladesh not only has a vested interest in staunching the effects of climate change on the world, but themselves. They feel the disastrous effects of climate and weather the most, suffering from the inaction and consumption of other nations. It’s why a majority of the climate demands for action always include international goals. 

Bangladesh first created their climate change action plan in 2008. Learn more about what the plan includes and Bangladesh’s modern climate goals.