Paper short abstract:

Bangladesh faces severe climate impacts due to its low-lying terrain, dense population, and poverty. Common challenges include loss of shelter, crops, assets, and livestock, along with limited access to health, education, and financial services. Ecosystem services offer a crucial solution.

Paper long abstract:

Bangladesh is one of the largest deltas in the world and is highly vulnerable to climate-induced disasters because of its geographic location, population density, poverty, and lack of context-specific resources. The recent climate-induced disasters are very unpredictable and cause extreme suffering. The frequent river erosion, drought, cold waves, and floods in northern parts and salinity, storm/tidal surge, and sea level rising in southern coastal areas are frequent threats. Bangladesh has a wide diversity of ecosystems including the world's largest mangrove forests in the south, which is historically instrumental for saving lives, protecting assets, and enhancing livelihood.

In this complex setting requiring a triple joint action on environment, socio-economy (including legal approaches), and disaster resilience, Friendship has developed a mangrove restoration program. The model is participative (intensive community engagement) and integrated (tripartite involvement: NGO, communities, local authorities). This integrated adaptation solution implemented by Friendship around the mangrove’s afforestation provides different options (protection of infrastructure, community-based disaster risk reduction, access to social safety net, livelihood diversification, etc.) to reduce the risks of future losses and damages for the local communities. A Midterm evaluation (MTE) was conducted in November 2023 to determine if an intervention is still relevant and how far it has progressed toward its goals. The midterm survey of the Mangrove Plantation for Ecosystem & Community Resilience in Coastal Bangladesh revealed that mangroves are one of the potential nature-based solutions for diversifying and improving the lifestyle and livelihoods of the natural resource-depended communities, shifting the ecosystem dynamics.