About US
Lead by the Bangladesh Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, this project focuses on strengthening the adaptive capacities of coastal communities, especially women and adolescent girls, to cope with impacts of climate change-induced salinity on their livelihoods and water security.The 6-year project (2019-2024) focuses on the Southwestern 39 coastal unions of 05 Upazilas of Khulna and Satkhira districts, both of which frequently experience cyclones and tidal flooding and experience severe drinking water scarcity due to salinity. An estimated 719,229 people (about 245,516 directly and 473,713 indirectly) are set to benefit.The project is empowering the communities, especially women, as ‘change-agents’ to plan, implement, and manage resilient livelihoods and drinking water solutions in the face of worsening climate change impacts on their freshwater resources.
The paradigm shift is to move away from focus on short-term responses and technology-led interventions towards community-centric solutions that build ownership and capacities across multiple stakeholders to sustain and scale up adaptive responses to safeguard livelihoods and water security.Community-centric awareness, skills building, value-chain and market linkages support can promote a transformational switch from current, non-adaptive livelihoods to climate-resilient livelihoods that can, in turn, reduce the vulnerabilities of the extreme poor against future climate change risks. Climate-resilient water technologies, such as rainwater harvesting and pond water systems, provide the communities with a means to shift away from their dependence on groundwater to surface water systems that can address seasonal variability and cope with slow- and sudden-onset changes.
Within the same communities, the benefits of the livelihoods and water security are synergistic and can mutually reinforce the resilience of the populations in coping with climate change-induced salinity impacts on their freshwater resources.Strengthened capacities across the government, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), and private sector to incorporate climate change risks into implementation and management of livelihood and drinking water solutions are critical support long-term adaptive capacities of the coastal communities.Strengthening MoWCA’s capacity to integrate gender and climate change into policies and programs particularly improves social targeting and climate-risk informed development across other sectors. Engaging national, sub-national, and local institutional structures in provision of these solutions creates an enabling environment for communities, particularly, women as ‘change-agents’ to adapt to climate change.