Household vulnerability to weather shocks and changing climatic conditions has become a major concern in developing countries. Yet the empirical evidence remains limited on the impact that changing environmental conditions have on households. This book explores climate change adaptation using a social resilience approach. The book is based on primary data from the Sundarbans, a densely populated area located across parts of Bangladesh and India (West Bengal) which is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events and climate change. The focus is on assessing how households are affected by cyclones: whether they are able to cope with, adapt to and recover from events and changes; whether they are warned ahead of time; whether they benefit from government safety nets and other social programs; and finally whether they are driven to either temporary or permanent migration. This assessment leads to a better understanding of how exposure to an area of climate change vulnerability and risk affects and shapes human responses.

Climate change poses serious threats to inclusive economic progress and poverty reduction. Strong countermeasures are required to increase the capacity of low-income people to mitigate their risk exposure to the impacts of climate change. Central pillars in planning for sustainable development and poverty alleviation must include vulnerability assessments, appropriate adaptation measures, and resilience-smart investments. This means placing climate change adaptation and resilience at the center of overall development policy. Coping with Climate Change in the Sundarbans contributes to this effort by synthesizing multiyear, multidisciplinary climate change studies on the Sundarbans—the world’s largest remaining contiguous mangrove forest and wetland of international importance, as well as home to some of South Asia’s poorest and most vulnerable communities. The studies’ findings indicate that, in a changing climate, sea-level rise, storm-surge intensification, and water salinization will alter the Sundarbans ecosystem significantly. The ripple effect of these changes will have multifaceted adverse impacts on the nature-dependent livelihoods, health, and nutrition of nearby communities. Elevated health risks, reduced land and labor productivity, and increased exposure to storms, floods, droughts, and other extreme events will make escape from poverty more difficult. Families in the Sundarbans are on the front line of these changes. Their experience and adaptation signal future decisions by hundreds of millions of families worldwide who will face similar threats from progressive sea-level rise. This research lays the technical foundation for developing a better understanding of the changes the Sundarbans currently faces, including responses of the ecosystem and human communities. Based on field research, location-specific, resilience-smart adaptation measures are recommended for reducing climate change vulnerability. Beyond the Sundarbans, the studies’ methods and findings will be of interest to development practitioners, policy makers, and researchers focused on island nations and countries worldwide that feature high-density populations and economic activity in low-lying coastal regions vulnerable to sea-level rise.

Climate resilience, or the capacity of socio-ecological systems to adapt and upkeep their functions when facing physical-chemical stress, is a key feature of ecosystems and communities. As the risks and impacts of climate change become more intense and more visible, there is a need to foster a broader understanding of both the impacts of these disruptions to food, water, and energy supplies and to increase resilience at the national and local level. The Handbook of Climate Change Resilience comprises a diverse body of knowledge, united in the objective of building climate resilience in both the industralised and the developing world. This unique publication will assist scientists, decision-makers and community members to take action to make countries, regions and cities more resilient.

The evidence for human-induced climate change is now overwhelming, the brunt of its impacts is already being felt by poor people, and the case for urgent action is compelling. This book addresses the two greatest challenges of our time – averting catastrophic climate change and eradicating poverty – and the close interconnections between them. Climate Change and Development provides a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary foundation for understanding the complex and tangled relationship between development and climate change. It argues that transformational approaches are required in order to reconcile poverty reduction and climate protection and secure sustained prosperity in the twenty first century. Section One provides the building blocks for understanding climate science and the nexus between climate and development. Section Two outlines responses to climate change from the perspective of developing countries, with chapters on international agreements, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and climate finance. Each chapter offers analytical tools for evaluating responses, enabling readers to ask smart questions about the climate change and development nexus as policy and action evolve in the coming years. The last three chapters of the book, contained in Section Three, are forward looking and focus on why and how development must be re-framed to deliver more equitable and sustainable outcomes. This section sets out different critiques of ‘development-as-usual’ and explores alternative paradigms of development in a warming and resource-constrained world. This is an invaluable and clearly written text that uses real world examples to bring to life perspectives from across different disciplines. It also contains chapter learning outcomes, and end of chapter summaries, discussion questions, and suggestions for further reading and relevant websites. The text is suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as those working in international development contexts who wish to get to grips with this pressing global challenge.

This book provides hands-on conceptual, theoretical, and case study discussions on vulnerability and resilience in the global south. This book covers the core of adaptation strategies in developing countries context in an easy-to-follow theoretical and empirical examples. This book shares contemporary approaches on vulnerability, adaptation strategies, and resilience, which aim to assist its targeted audience (academics, policymakers, and practitioners) to understand and make informed decisions in a wide variety of real-world resilience situations.

The book outlines the climate change adaptation (CCA) actions in Bangladesh drawing examples and lessons from different projects and programs in the country. The content is based on a selection of available documents, a consultative workshop with the academicians from different universities undertaking higher education on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, and the editors’ own knowledge and experience in the field. The book has four parts. Part I gives the details of climate change impacts, providing the scenarios, negotiations, and specific impacts on sea-level rise and the health sectors. Part II focuses on climate change strategy and action plans. Part III covers socio-economic impacts in terms of economic and environmental costs. Part IV focuses on adaptive actions for agriculture, livelihoods, and integrated approaches in agriculture and fisheries. Part V deals with climate-change governance issues. The primary target groups for this book are students and researchers in the fields of environment, disaster risk reduction, and climate change studies. The book will provide them with a good idea of the current trend of research in the field and will furnish basic knowledge on this important topic in Bangladesh. Another target group comprises practitioners and policy makers, who will be able to apply collective knowledge to policy and decision making.

This book offers a philosophical analysis of the environmental crisis in the Indian Sundarbans, drawing upon phenomenological narratives. It nuances the present understanding of the crisis by introducing plurality in our metaphysical understanding of the environment and epistemological understanding of the human–environment relationship. Contemporary research on the Sundarbans mainly focuses on the impending threat of climate change, natural disasters, as well as increasing human–animal conflict, conservation, and forest access debates, while scholarly works have mostly used environmental impact assessments to offer technocratic solutions that prioritize a particular type of human–environment relationship characterized by an "anticipation of ruin." Rather than rushing to find solutions, I embark on a journey to unpack the meaning of crisis through phenomenological narratives of human–environment relationships. A deep dive into the human–environment relationship through an intentional engagement with the work-worlds of islanders, the formation of a more-than-human community is revealed, giving rise to community-based ethic that transcends the poverty of thought and imagination in comprehending the crisis of the Indian Sundarbans. This new ethical framework emphasizes the co-emergence of self-consciousness and eco-consciousness, serving as a moral impetus for individuals to act ethically towards the environment. This approach impels us to rethink what the Sundarbans is, how the crisis gets manifested to the inlanders and outsiders, and what kind of procedural changes are required to protect the Sundarbans as a living ecosystem instead of a natural museum. The book’s phenomenological depth and engaged philosophical framework will elicit deep interest from within academia and among practitioners who are working in environmental studies, philosophy, human ecology, and island studies. The convergence of conceptual understandings and field narratives will also draw the interest of research students working in correlated fields.