Sustainable Adaptation and Drought Management

Abstract

The word “adaptation” is derived from the term “adapt”, which means “making things/conditions/situations better by changing” (Ahmed in Bangladesh climate change impacts and vulnerability: a synthesis, climate change cell, Bangladesh Department of Environment. Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2006). Adaption makes the community have a better way of living and communities will need to adapt to the already inevitable effects of a changing climate. Adaptation to climate change is therefore the process through which people reduce the negative effects of climate on their health and well-being and adjust their lifestyles to the new situation around them (Pender in What Is climate change? And how it will effect Bangladesh. Briefing Paper (Final Draft). Church of Bangladesh Social Development Programme, 2008). Adaptation is a practice by which strategies to restrain and deal with the consequences of climate change, together with climate variability, can be enhanced, developed and implemented (UNDP in User’s guidebook for the adaptation policy framework. United Nations Development Programme, p. 33, 2004). “In a nutshell adaptation is being better prepared or adapting to climate change, not fighting it, but learning to live with it” (Rahman in Risks, vulnerability and adaptation in Bangladesh (Human Development Report, 2007/08). Human Development Report Office Occasional Paper, 2007/13, UNDP, 2008). Droughts have significant impacts in both developed and developing countries. The countries still suffer from droughts the most (Wilhite in The role of disaster preparedness in national planning with specific reference to droughts, Springer, pp. 23–37, 2005) and Bangladesh is one of those countries. The northern part of Bangladesh experiences droughts regularly. In the last three to four decades, when climate change is reported to be observed in northern Bangladesh, the situation has gradually decreased (Habiba et al. in Int J Disaster Risk Reduction 2012:72–84, 2012). In Bangladesh, the agricultural activities are mainly rain-fed and heavily depend on rainfall (Mbugua in Research report on water scarcity in Northern Bangladesh, 2011). This dependence makes this northern region particularly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change.