Coastal Livelihood Rate Case Study

1. Introduction

The coastal zone of Bangladesh consists of 19 districts and 147 upazilas (Figure 1) comprising 31.99 percent territory and 28 percent population of the country. This region is subject to at least three natural hazard which are tidal fluctuations, salinities, (soil, surface water or ground water) & cyclone. Due to the impact of climate change, these calamities are more frequent then the past.

Figure 1: Land use Map of Coastal Region of Bangladesh

Livelihood can be defined as the bundle of different types of assets, abilities and activities that enable a person or household to survive (Stamoulis et al., 2003). There are different livelihood pattern in the coastal region of Bangladesh. The principal sources of livelihood are agriculture and agro-based activities. Per capita land is only 0.07 which equals to that of national average. However, the natural resources of the coast face multiple and critical problems including non-sustainable resource uses and natural hazard due to impact of climate change. The status of coastal livelihood groups in our country can best be described as fragile. With a high dependency on natural resources, few livelihood groups have found sustainable route out of poverty.

For such livelihood communities, frequent natural

In the coastal region, poor people do not have adequate capacity to fight climate change induced natural hazard and tend to live in “marginal’ & more hazardous conditions. The study categorized the poverty status on the basis of household income per month. Only 20% household remain below extreme poverty line that is Extreme Poor (Monthly household income is less than BDT 2500). Only 31% of the coastal households remain above poverty line that is Non-Poor (Household income is above BDT 5000 per month) and 48% of the coastal households are Poor (Monthly Household income between BDT 2500 -5000) (Figure 4). This result is quite