Livelihood and climate vulnerability of coastal communities to natural disaster in south-western Bangladesh

ABSTRACT Bangladesh is one of the countries that is most likely to be affected by natural disasters and climate change. However, much less is known about the integrated livelihood and climate vulnerabilities of coastal communities to natural disasters in southwestern Bangladesh. Therefore, this paper proposes a holistic approach to measuring livelihood vulnerability in the southwestern coast of Bangladesh based on primary data from 300 respondents through face-to-face interviews, focus group discussion (FGD), and key informant interviews (KII), and secondary data on rainfall and temperature for the years 2010–2017. This study developed the livelihood vulnerability index (LVI), the climate vulnerability index (CVI), and the LVI-IPCC to estimate climate vulnerability by incorporating 36 indicators of 9 major components under three dimensions. The pragmatic results show that the three coastal unions have different LVI, CVI, and LVI-IPCC values. Still, the households of the Gabura union showed more vulnerability than the rest of the two, with the highest LVI, CVI, and LVI-IPCC values due to their inadequate access to fresh water, limited physical resources, fewest livelihood strategies, the least variety of crops, and worst health conditions. This logical approach may be applied in data-scarce regions to assess vulnerability and evaluate potential policy efficiency for baseline comparison. The study demonstrates that the requirement for focused interventions and context-specific sustainable policies and development approaches should be implemented to lessen the vulnerability of coastal dwellers. These findings have implications for developing and implementing household resilience and climate change adaptation projects by the government, donor organizations, and other pertinent groups in three susceptible unions.