"How Vulnerable are Bangladesh's Indigenous People to Climate Change?"
Speaker: Dr. Bernhard Gunter, President, Bangladesh Development Research Center (BDRC)
Time: Tuesday, March 4, 12:30 to 2 pm
Place: Room MC 8-100, The World Bank, 1818 H Street, N.W. Washington D.C. 20433
Abstract
Dr. Gunter will present a paper that compares the vulnerabilities to climate change and climate variability of the indigenous people with the Bengali population of Bangladesh. The paper was jointly authored by Bernhard Gunter, Atiq Rahman and A. F. M. Ataur Rahman and presented at the Conference on "Indigenous People and Bangladesh Environment" in Dhaka in December 2007. The paper distinguishes between (a) individual vulnerabilities that are related to an individual's capability to adapt to climate change and; (b) spatial vulnerabilities, that is, vulnerabilities that are related to the location of a person (like the exposure to climate change-induced disasters). While an individual's capability to adapt to climate change is determined by many factors, some relatively simple approximation is to look at poverty, landlessness, and illiteracy. Spatial vulnerabilities are reviewed by looking at drought hazard maps, flood hazard maps, landslide hazard maps, and cyclone hazard maps. Hence, the paper compares levels of poverty, landlessness, illiteracy, and the more direct though also more subjective exposures to increased droughts, floods, landslides, and cyclones across the two population groups.
About the Presenter
Dr. Gunter, who founded the BDRC in January 2007, has more than 15 years of research and/or development work at various universities and international organizations (including the AfDB, ILO, UNCTAD, UNDP and the World Bank). The BDRC is a non-profit research organization, formally recognized as a tax exempt public organization in the United States, incorporated with the specific purpose to undertake and disseminate research on development issues relevant for Bangladesh in order to foster the peaceful development of nations.
About the AEDSB
The Association for Economic and Development Studies on Bangladesh (AEDSB) is a professional body of social scientists, development practitioners and others interested in the development of Bangladesh. As a body recognized by the Allied Social Science Association (ASSA, the AEDSB also hosts a seminar and its annual meetings as part of the ASSA meetings every winter. The AEDSB Washington Seminar Series has hosted Prime Ministers, Ministers, and Justices from Bangladesh as well as well-known Bangladeshi and non-Bangladeshi academicians, businessmen, NGO leaders, diplomats, Bankers, civil servants, and World Bank and IMF staff. The AEDSB's members, who come from several countries, are based mostly in North America but also in Bangladesh, Australia and Europe. It is governed by a nine member elected Executive Body whose current President is Professor Salim Rashid, Professor of Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, United States.