Paper short abstract:

Poor people living in informal urban settlements in cities in Bangladesh face the double urban of climate-induced and pre-existing non-climatic vulnerabilities, which significantly impacts their daily lives, livelihood, health and overall wellbeing.

Paper long abstract:

Climate change is one of the leading driving forces of internal migration in Bangladesh. Every year, millions of people living in coastal and riverbank areas lose their houses and livelihoods due to different forms of natural disasters. Many of them migrate from rural to urban areas and most of the poor migrants end up living in cities' informal settlements.

This abstract presents findings from a rapid desk review of published literature which was done to understand the climate-induced vulnerabilities among the people living in informal urban settlements in Bangladesh.

Internal and external factors such as unplanned rapid urbanization and locations of informal urban settlements and other socio-economic determinants magnify the vulnerabilities of millions of migrants living in those settlements. The poor unhealthy living conditions in those informal settlements expose the residents to the risks associated with climate change, which have significant impacts on their health and livelihood. The environmental issues related to climate change such as heavy rainfall and prolonged monsoon, high temperature and less rainfall/humidity in summer and low temperature in winter accelerate the pre-existing vulnerabilities caused by non-climatic shocks such as poor housing, drainage, water-sanitation systems, and financial insecurities. There is a lack of data on the double burden of climatic and non-climatic vulnerabilities in informal urban settlements in Bangladesh. The ARISE project in Bangladesh is exploring and documenting those vulnerabilities to inform the city actors and to shed light on the impact of climate change in informal urban settlements.