Climate Change-Triggered Vulnerability Assessment of the Flood-Prone Communities in Bangladesh: A Gender Perspective
27 Pages Posted: 5 Aug 2022
Abstract
Despite widespread understanding on vulnerability scholarship, how the intersection of climatic and non-climatic forces causes differential exposure and sensitivity to climatic disturbances is very scant. The prime purpose of this research is to illustrate differential vulnerability of rural populations to floods in northern Bangladesh. To achieve this goal, empirical data – both primary and secondary data – were procured. A quantitative research design was applied using a structured interview technique to garner field-level data. Secondary data on rainfall and temperature were collected from the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD). We assessed multifaceted differential vulnerabilities by employing Hahn et al.’s Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI). Our findings revealed that women were more vulnerable compared to their male counterparts, which indicated the index value of 0.072 for women and 0.044 for men, respectively. Women (LVI value 0.545) were more vulnerable than men (0.477) in terms of sanitation, health, food security, socio-demographic characteristics, agricultural production, and community’s perception of climate change; men were vulnerable to floods due to their closeness to water-related works. Multifaceted vulnerabilities varied among women and men according to their social roles, and social inequality (e.g., power dynamics in access to properties). Both men and women were equally exposed to floods because of living in floodplain regions, whereas women were more sensitive to climate change-induced floods and had high inclination toward adopting adaptive measures than that of males. Our research suggest that risk-driven plans and policy interventions need to be introduced for reducing intersectional factors that cause gendered-differentiated vulnerability.
Keywords: Adaptive capacity, flood, gendered vulnerability, livelihood vulnerability index (LVI), vulnerability assessment.
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