Bangladesh Climate-Resilient Infrastructure Stress-test – Global Center on Adaptation

Bangladesh is widely acknowledged as being one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate hazards. Its tropical location in the centre of the Bay of Bengal means that both acute climate hazards, such as widespread monsoonal fluvial flooding, strong cyclonic winds, and high storm surges, as well as chronic hazards such as sea-level rise and saline intrusion, continuously impact the access of services to local populations and their sustainable socio-economic development. Infrastructure systems underpin society; they comprise of interconnected networks of assets that provide basic services to society, enhancing socio-economic growth through transport connectivity, access to health and education, supply of water, and safety, and many other factors. Therefore, acute climate hazards can cause direct physical damage to infrastructure assets and directly or indirectly disrupt the provision of services. The repeated damages caused by climate hazards in Bangladesh limit the country’s progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), long-term climate resilience, and overall socio-economic growth.
 
Led by Bangladesh’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC), this assessment brings together expertise via the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), with technical analyses undertaken by the University of Oxford and the Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS), and support from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management of the Netherlands. The aim of this assessment is to quantify the impact of climate hazards on the provision of infrastructure services and the achievement of the country’s development objectives under current and projected climate scenarios.