Challenges of mainstreaming climate change adaptation in Bangladesh

Adaptation is a policy instrument for facing the challenges posed by climate change. Government pursues adaptation in different ways aside from simply creating awareness about climate change and its effects. It makes rules for changing behaviour and practices which include National Action Plans, building codes, standardisations and so forth; provides loans to the affected communities, facilitates insurances, takes measures to correct market imperfections and grants financial incentives or discourages a specific behaviour through taxation; and strengthens institutional capacity, develops skills, supplies emergency relief and arranges rehabilitation, as well as constructing physical infrastructures, and repairing and maintaining the existing ones. These initiatives require additional resources and efforts which the developing countries, the most vulnerable to climate change, are unable to afford. For this reason, government needs to mainstream adaptation into their development planning and programs including the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Mainstreaming involves a number of challenges, most of which are related to policy instruments, such as lack of awareness and knowledge sharing, resource shortages, organisational inefficiencies, and ineffective regulations. Bangladesh being a developing country and climatically the most vulnerable, has undertaken various policy measures for adaptation and its mainstreaming. This study has made an effort to identify the challenges associated with the adaptation mainstreaming endeavours in Bangladesh. Also, it ultimately offers a number of suggestions for overcoming these obstacles.