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An Investigation of Coastal Vulnerability and Internal Consistency of Local Perceptions Under Climate Change Risk in the Southwest Part of Bangladesh

M. A. Rakib
Graduate Program in Sustainability Science - Global Leadership Initiative, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, Chiba, 277-8563, Japan and Department of Disaster Management, Begum Rokeya University, Rangpur, 5400, Bangladesh

Jun Sasaki
Department of Socio-Cultural Environmental Studies, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, Chiba, 277-8563, Japan

Sosimohan Pal
Department of Disaster Management, Begum Rokeya University, Rangpur, 5400, Bangladesh

Md. Asif Newaz
Environmental Science Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna, 9208, Bangladesh

Md. Bodrud-Doza
Department of Environmental Sciences, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, 1342, Bangladesh

Mohammad A. H. Bhuiyan
Department of Environmental Sciences, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, 1342, Bangladesh

Abstract/ Executive Summary:

Climatic threats force disruption on community lifestyles by impairing social factors, the fundamental components of ensuring social sustainability. This study investigates the situational factors affecting the consequences on coastal livelihoods, and social activities; it also considers the effectiveness of traditional knowledge in reducing possible risks. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed, including a questionnaire survey for identifying the local perception of climatic impacts alongside the impacts on daily activities. Interviews, field observations, and multivariate analyses were performed to explain the vulnerability status in coastal communities. Results show that most livelihood sectors were severely affected by the long-term and repeated actions of climatic hazards, such as cyclones, associated with a number of unavoidable risks making people susceptible to damages in social wellbeing. In addition, saltwater intrusion damages drinking water supply and crop farming, which can cause diseases among coastal communities, but very few attempts have been made to provide alternative sources of drinking water at a household level. Moreover, principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA) revealed significant interfaces between local perceptions and the socio-and agro-environmental factors changing the overall status of regional hazards. Thus, the situation exhibits coastal hazards, social vulnerability, and social crisis. Local people use their traditional knowledge to cope with various levels of crisis under vulnerable conditions, but sometimes doing so exceeds their capacity owing to the unwanted changes in climatic variables and knowledge gaps or uncertainties. Challenges on the basis of the problematic points should be noted, however, it would be more significant to achieve social sustainability under adverse climatic conditions.

Keywords: Coastal hazards, Livelihood crisis, Social vulnerability, Traditional knowledge uncertainty, Multivariate statistic

Location: The Gabura union in the Shymnagar Upazila and Satkhira districts located in the southwestern coastal region of Bangladesh

Start Date:

End Date:

Program Area: Risk Management in Agriculture

Non-commodity: Climate change

Objectives:

To consider efficient levels of traditional knowledge to cope with the relevant impacts and, in some cases, climate uncertainties because most local communities have failed to save themselves using their practical experience alone.

Methodology:

Study area: This study was conducted at the Gabura union in the Shymnagar Upazila and Satkhira districts located in the southwestern coastal region of Bangladesh. It is a site that is highly vulnerable to coastal hazards like cyclonic storm surges and salinity problems, which mostly originate from the southern part of the Bay of Bengal. In Bangladesh, cyclones (e.g., Aila-2009, Nargis-2008 and Sidr-2007) have caused significant damage among the coastal communities, such as loss of life, property (Dube, 2009), and livestock. A large number of people are involved in agriculture, aquaculture, fishing, and mangrove forestrelated livelihood activities. Major portion of the agricultural land has been converted into aquaculture farming. The path of two of the major rivers, Kholpetua and Kobadak, encloses different sites of the union. Geographically, this area is considered to be a highly vulnerable and disaster-prone location, very close to mangrove forests and the Bay of Bengal. Data collection: Methods of data collection consisted of a questionnaire survey, interviews and field observations. These techniques were intensively used to investigate the real scenarios, and conceptualize data collection in the field. A semi-structured questionnaire was formulated using open and closed-ended questions to explore the situational crisis, social crisis, and traditional strategies for disaster risk reduction. The questionnaire was segmented into four sections: (1) general information about the local people, (2) coastal threats and impacts, (3) livelihood vulnerabilities depending on regional natural events and socio- and agro-environmental factors, and (4) traditional techniques for disaster risk reduction and perspectives on disaster management challenges. Likert scale (five scales) type questions were used to code the questionnaire data. A total of 149 questionnaires were collected among respondents (both male and female) who agreed to share their views. All questions were read to respondents in the local language. All information was collected using feedback forms, and some additional information was recorded by hand and later formatted in a data collection sheet. A total number of 32 principal variables were selected. The variables reflected social issues, regional environmental changes, impacts, severe salinity hazards, and local initiatives to take the measures under adverse climatic conditions. These variables were used to evaluate the social vulnerability in terms of the changing status with time using multivariate statistics. Almost all the variables were selected from discussions with the local people. Interviews were conducted with local businessmen, floating farmers, fishermen, honey collectors, day laborers, travelers, and some other unspecified people. Field observation was performed to understand the social problems in relation to research questions. These findings were helpful to verify the questionnaire results. The entire approach to data collection was implemented rigorously to maintain the importance of the study's findings and to fulfill the research goals. The database was organized according to the analysis and interpretative design while similar characteristics of the data were kept together so as to ensure the existing relationships among the variables were apparent. In addition, to conceptualize the relationship between social vulnerability, development crisis, and local knowledge uncertainty, each of the factors corresponding to the three components was gathered through interviews and field observations. Multivariate analysis: Multivariate analysis, including principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA), were performed to examine the relationships, causes, and impacts of socio- and agro-environmental factors. PCA plays a significant role in identifying the associations between two variables by reducing database dimensionality (Helena et al., 2000). The associated variance among the variables expressed by the PCA eigenvalues and the total number of original variables' inclusion in the PCA are specified by the loadings, while the loading scores refer to the transformation of individual observations (Helena et al., 2000). CA identifies the similarities in regard to variable characteristics and classifications into several groups (Bhuiyan et al., 2010). Each of the groups contained a number of variables that exhibited strong internal homogeneity while two groups demonstrated high external heterogeneity (Shrestha and Kazama, 2007). A hierarchical agglomerative approach is the most common technique for expressing the relationship between variables or an entire set while Euclidean distance usually represents the distance between samples, typically explained by a dendrogram or tree diagram (McKenna, 2003; Otto, 1998).

Source of Information: Journal of Environmental Management, Volume 231, 1 February 2019, Pages 419-428

Article Link (Online Journal): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.10.054

Funding Source:

Budget:

Total Budget (Tk.) :

Achievement/Findings:

This study undertook the exploration of the overall facts associated with climate change impacts according to social views, environmental impacts, and the socioeconomic conditions of the Gabura communities. In this era, environmental abnormalities are considered one of the more common and threatening issues to human sustainability. On the whole, increases in environmental consequences force people to become more susceptible to geographical position and changes in socioeconomic growth. In Bangladesh, coastal hazards and their impacts lead to inevitable menace, and continued loss of life and property. Depending on the observation, the coastal communities appear to experience more disasters than previously along with the negative influence of regional environmental changes, such as salinity intrusion. Regarding the local perceptions, owing to the climate change and tropical cyclone, livelihood sectors are severely affected, which make it more vulnerable to the socioeconomic structure. They were always struggling with making a livelihood and having to seek money to meet their daily basic needs. Nowadays the income-generating source, such as shrimp or agro-farming, is severely affected by adverse climatic abnormalities, salinity problems, and disease outbreaks. Drinking water vulnerability was identified as one of the most health-threatening crises while a large number of people were directly exposed to other potential health risks and diseases. The multivariate analysis (PCA and CA) showed that local perceptions help to examine the coastal community's vulnerability despite the fact that most people experienced environmental susceptibilities, livelihood crises, and social insecurities. These findings would be helpful to explore new guidelines to establish policy dimensions of the crises, and in the future planning and possible policy-making to achieve social development and sustainability. This study suggests that it is also essential to learn more about the critical aspects of salinity intrusion problems and how they affect local socioeconomic status considering that many of the local people have been encountering health problems caused by drinking water contaminated by salt.

Knowledge Management: Journal