Letter of Transmittal

10th May 2018

Amit Roy
Adjunct Faculty,
Army Institute of Business Administration (AIBA)
Jalalabad Cantonment, Sylhet.

Dear Sir,
With due respect, I would like to inform you that I am honored to prepare my report on the
impact of climate change in economy of Bangladesh as required for our BBA program.
This report shows the climate situation, GDP and effect on different sector of economy along
with some recommendations and conclusion. In this report, I tried to focus on the relevant
information of the climate of Bangladesh to show how it is affecting economy and gained depth
knowledge and information about the given topics. I tried my best to show my skill. Finally, I
would like to assure you that we will be there for any clarification, explanation whenever
required.
Therefore, I believe the report will serve for its best purpose and hopefully this report will be
accepted. Thank you in advance for your kind assistance.

Sincerely yours,
Sakif Ryhan – 10306026
Batch: BBA-3

Army Institute of Business Administration, Sylhet.

1|Page
 TABLE OF CONTENT

Sl. Content Page

1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY………………………………………………………. 3
a) Key Words………………………………………………………………… 3

2 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………….. 4
3 CLIMATE CHANGE……………………………………………………………. 4
a) Climate……………………………………………………………………. 4
b) Climate Change …………………………………………………………... 4
c) Climate Impact……………………………………………………………. 5
d) The Green House Effect…………………………………………………... 5
e) Evidence of Global Warming…………………………………………….. 6

4 CLIMATE CHANGE IN ECONOMY…………………………………………. 6

5 ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES……………………………………. 9
6 RECOMMENDATIONS………………………………………………………… 10
7 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………… 10

8 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………… 11

2|Page
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The change in climate has a greater impact on different sector one them is economy. Over all
every sector is affected due to change in climate. Specially agriculture, production, etc. all are
connected to our economy. This paper is all about the impact on economy due to climate change
in Bangladesh. It covers the change in GDP of Bangladesh and other sector of economy also.
There is considerable heterogeneity in the effect across the country. This paper covers the
positive and negative side of climate change based on that some recommendation has been
given also. We conclude that this approach may be unreliable, because it produces estimates of
the effect of climate change that are very sensitive to seemingly minor decisions about the
appropriate control variables, sample and weighting. Overall, the findings contradict the
popular view that climate change will have substantial negative welfare consequences for the
economy of Bangladesh.

Key Words
Climate change, Economy, Agriculture, GDP.

3|Page
 INTRODUCTION
There is a growing consensus that emissions of greenhouse gases due to human activity will
lead to higher temperatures and increased precipitation. It is thought that these changes in
climate will impact economic well-being (Roberts, 2012). Since temperature and precipitation
are direct inputs in agricultural production, many believe that the largest effects will be in this
sector. Impact of climate change in Bangladesh is an extremely crucial issue and Bangladesh
is one of the most vulnerable nations to the impacts of global climate change in the coming
decades. Bangladesh is watered by a total of 57 trans-boundary rivers coming down to it: 54
from neighboring India and 3 from Myanmar, and situated at the bottom of the mighty GBM
river system (comprising the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna). Nearly a quarter of
Bangladesh is less than seven feet above sea level. More than one thousand people are living
per square kilometer with the national population increasing by 2 million people each year.
Almost half of the population is in poverty (Germanwatch, 2009). Bangladesh is one of the
largest deltas in the world which is highly vulnerable to natural disasters because of its
geographical location, flat and low-lying landscape, population density, poverty, illiteracy, lack
of institutional setup etc. In other words, the physical, social as well as economic conditions of
Bangladesh are very typical to any of the most vulnerable countries to natural disasters in the
world. The total land area is 147,570 sq. km. consists mostly of floodplains (almost 80%)
leaving major part of the country (with the exception of the north-western highlands) prone to
flooding during the rainy season. moreover, the adverse effects of climate change – especially
high temperature, sea-level rise, cyclones and storm surges, salinity intrusion, heavy monsoon
downpours etc. has aggravated the overall economic development scenario of the country to a
great extent (Denissen, 2012).

CLIMATE CHANGE
 Climate
Climate is simply the weather that is dominant or normal in a particular region; the term climate
includes temperature, rainfall and wind patterns. Geography, global air and sea currents, tree
cover, global temperatures and other factors influence the climate of an area, which causes the
local weather. Figure 1 below is a schematic diagram of the climate system (Pender 2008).
 Climate Change
Climate change refers to a broad range of global phenomena created predominantly by burning
fossil fuels, which add heat-trapping gases to Earth’s atmosphere. These phenomena include
the increased temperature trends described by global warming, but also encompass changes
4|Page
such as sea level rise; ice mass loss in Greenland, Antarctica, the Arctic and mountain glaciers
worldwide; shifts in flower/plant blooming; and extreme weather events (Shaftel 2016).

 Climatic Impacts:

Bangladesh experiences different types of Natural Disasters almost every year because of the
Global Warming as well as Climate Change impacts, these are:

1. Floods / Flash Floods: Almost 80% of the total area of the country is prone to flooding
(Karim 2012).

2. Cyclones and Storm Surges: South and South-eastern Parts of the country were hit by
Tropical Cyclones during the last few years.

3. Salinity Intrusion: Almost the whole Coastal Belt along the Bay of Bengal is
experiencing Salinity problem.

4. Extreme Temperature and Drought: North and North-western regions of the country are
suffering because of the Extreme Temperature problem.

 The Greenhouse Effect

The Greenhouse Effect is a natural process through which various gasses and water vapor in
the atmosphere affects the earth’s climate. It is so named because it acts like a glass greenhouse
for plants by preventing the incoming heat from the sun from leaving causing warming of the
earth just as the inside of a greenhouse warms. The Greenhouse Effect can also be likened to
being under a blanket in the sunshine; the body under the blanket will heat up and the blanket
will keep the heat from escaping causing warming (Pender 2008).
The earth’s climate is driven by this continuous flow of energy from the sun, mainly in the
form of visible light. About 30% is immediately scattered back into space, but most of the
remaining 70% passes down through the atmosphere to warm the earth’s surface. Being much
cooler than the sun, the earth does not give out energy as visible light. Instead, it emits heat in
the form of infrared or thermal radiation. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere block this
infrared radiation from escaping directly from the surface to space (Williams 2002).

5|Page
  Evidence for Global Warming
It has been suspected for the last 40 years that human activity has been altering the earth’s
climate. To confirm whether this was true or not the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) was set up by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations
Environment Program, producing its first assessment report in 1990 (Depledge & Lamb 2005).
Hundreds of scientists from many countries across the world review thousands of published
scientific articles that include research using advanced mathematical modelling to predict
future changes, as well as research monitoring historical and current changes in climate, in
order to produce the IPCC assessments. Furthermore the work of the IPCC is backed by the
worldwide scientific community, as well as being endorsed by all major world governments
(Houghton, 2005). As research has accumulated on climate change, scientists have become
more and more certain that global warming is happening and clearer as to its effects. The
Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC published in 2007 stated that: Most of the observed
increase in global average temperatures since the mid20th century is very likely due to the
observed increase in anthropogenic (human caused) greenhouse gas concentrations, while the
observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice mass loss,
support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50
years can be explained without external forcing (outside human influence), and very likely that
it is not due to known natural causes alone (Pender 2008).

CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACT IN ECONOMY

The impacts of climate change are many and diverse. Determining whether these impacts are
beneficial or detrimental, small or large, depends on the sector, location, and time being
considered. Unfortunately, a reading of the literature on the impacts of climate change (Field
and Canziani 2014) is likely to leave a lay reader confused. It is very difficult to make sense of
the many and different effects: crops hit by worsening drought, crops growing faster because
of carbon dioxide fertilization, heat stress increasing, cold stress decreasing, sea levels rising,
increasing energy demand for cooling, decreasing energy demand for heating, infectious
disease spreading, species going extinct. Thus we need aggregate indicators to assess whether
climate change is, on balance, a good thing or a bad thing and whether the climate problem is
small or large relative to the many other problems that society faces. I focus in this and the next
section on two aggregate indicators (Smith et al. 2001): the impact of climate change on total
economic welfare and the distribution of those welfare impacts.

6|Page
The poor and vulnerable in Bangladesh are constantly adjusting to climate change by raising
their houses above the flood level or changing crop types. The government of Bangladesh has
invested more than USD 10 billion during the past 35 years to make Bangladesh less vulnerable
to natural disasters. The impacts of climate change on national economy of Bangladesh are
devastating because our economy is greatly dependent on agricultural productivity. Bangladesh
lost an estimated 5.9 per cent of GDP because of storms from 1998 to 2009 (Das 2017).

Figure 1: Estimate decrease in GDP due to Climate Change (Raihan, 2014).

In terms of risks of increasing heat stress, current temperatures are already approaching critical
levels during the susceptible stages of the rice plant in Bangladesh in March-June. According
to the 2015 Climate Change Vulnerability Index, Bangladesh's economy is more at risk to
climate change than any country. Especially devastating storms that come along every few
years have an outsized impact -- such as the 2007 cyclone Sidr, which wrought an estimated
USD 1.7 billion in damages, or about 2.6 per cent of the GDP on top of USD 1.1 billion losses
due to monsoon flooding in the previous 12 months. In May 2009, 3.9 million Bangladeshis
directly suffered from the impact of cyclone Aila, which caused an estimated USD 270 million
in asset damage (Das 2017).

Bangladesh agriculture is highly prone to climate change events. Crop, fishery, livestock and
forestry are all susceptible to increase in temperature, variation in precipitation, sun-shine hours
and sea level rise. The major factors limiting sustained, attainable, yield potential in different
parts of Bangladesh is the year-to-year variability in the times of onset and end of the rainy

7|Page
season, in the continuity of moisture supply from rainfall during the pre-monsoon seasons, very
heavy rainfall, in the time of onset and withdrawal of seasonal floods and in the depth of
inundation, in the incidence and timing of tropical cyclones and associated storm surges, and
in the time of onset and end of the period with low winter temperatures. IPCC estimates that,
by 2050, rice production in Bangladesh could decline by 8 per cent and wheat by 32 per cent
(Das 2017). Climate change and global warming affect Bangladesh fisheries to a great extent.
The impact is manifested by flood, disaster, rising salinity, changing course of the rivers etc.
If affects habitats alteration, fish reproduction, fish migration natural fish breeding and fish
biology. In recent years, natural fish stocks have declined due to natural and man-made
catastrophes, degradation of aquatic environments and water areas of Bangladesh due to
climate change.

Hilsa, the most popular fish in the country, resides in the coastal waters of the Bay of Bengal
and moves into the freshwater habitat into the rivers for the purpose of breeding or spawning.
The hilsa fish is severely affected by the rise of temperature and salinity due to climate change
impact. Heavy rainfall as well as onrush of water from the upstream Meghalaya hills in India
has led to the inundation of a vast areas of croplands of haors and low-lying areas of the
northeast. Flood started on 28 March affecting Sylhet, Moulavibazar, Sunamganj, Habiganj,
Netrokona and Kishoreganj in the north east region. Rising water overflow and breeched
embankment in many places and inundated vast areas of croplands. It destroyed nearly-ready-
for-harvesting boro rice in about 160,170 hectors areas. Since the area significantly contributes
to the national food production, overall food security of the country may experience negatively
as a consequence. Whatever the reason is, focuses should be on helping the affected people to
cope with the losses (Das 2017).

8|Page
 ADVANTAGES & DISADVANTAGES OF CLIMATE CHANGE

There are many likely effects of climate change: positive and negative, economic and
ecological, humanitarian and financial. Basically it depends on the type of change. If it brings
disaster to a region than there will be very bad impact with lot of disadvantages. On the other
hand if the change is suitable for the region then it’s a gift for the human being and
environment. Some advantages and disadvantages are given below.

Causes Advantages Disadvantages

Heavy Rainfall Heavy rainfall is good for Heavy rainfall causes flood in the low
production of tea in Bangladesh. land areas.
High Some crops and fruits grow well Very high amount of temperature cases
Temperature in good amount of temperature the rise on sea level, ice melt and also
such as corn, cucumbers, melons cause skin diseases.
also it is important for brick
production.
Cold Weather Urban people have a suitable Rural people cannot even live into
environment to work. their home.
Natural Disaster Businessman sometime took People who have low level income
advantage of this complex they lose their shelter due to flood,
situation and grab opportunities. cyclone.
Such as distribution of health
business.
Normal Rainfall Normal amount of rainfall brings Rainfall cause damage to different
a smile on the farmers face infrastructures also different business
because it will help them to such as brick production.
produce highest amount of crops
to fulfill the demand.

9|Page
 RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Government should bring high technology and go for further advancement to reduce
the damage due to climate change.
2. Privet organization should come up to contribute in government project of climate
change.
3. Train up the authorize people more properly who are the government volunteers to
work properly in the crisis.

CONCLUSION

The whole paper shows the direction that though climate change has some small advantage but
the future is in stake of Bangladesh specially the agriculture sector and as a whole the economic
sector. There need to be lot of improvements. Government is taking different initiatives to save
their people. Sooner or later Bangladesh will hopefully recover all the space and disadvantages
that is facing now.

10 | P a g e
 REFERENCES

Das, S. (2017, May 07). Climate change: Its economic impacts on BD - Op-Ed. Retrieved May
10, 2018, from http://www.observerbd.com/details.php?id=72468

Denissen, A. K. (2012, April 25). Climate Change & its Impacts on Bangladesh. Retrieved
May 10, 2018, from https://www.ncdo.nl/artikel/climate-change-its-impacts-bangladesh

Depledge, J., & Lamb, R. 2005. Caring for Climate: A guide to the Climate Change
Convention and the Kyoto Protocol. Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC): Bonn, Germany.

Field C. B., Canziani O. F., eds. 2014. Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and
Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

G. (2009, December). Global Climate Risk Index 2010 - reflecting most severely affected
countries over almost two decades | Germanwatch e.V. Retrieved May 10, 2018, from
https://germanwatch.org/en/3661

Houghton, J. 2005. Climate Change: a Christian Challenge and Opportunity. Presentation by

Sir John Houghton to the National Association of Evangelicals Washington DC, March 2005.
Accessed through John Ray Initiative website.

Karim, R. (2012, April 25). Climate Change & its Impacts on Bangladesh. Retrieved May 10,
2018, from https://www.ncdo.nl/artikel/climate-change-its-impacts-bangladesh

Pender, J.S. 2008. What Is Climate Change? And How It Will Effect Bangladesh. Briefing
Paper. (Final Draft). Dhaka, Bangladesh: Church of Bangladesh Social Development
Program.

Raihan, S., Dr. (2014, February 1). "How costly are the impacts of climate change in
Bangladesh?" – Published in the Thinking Aloud, 1 February, 2014. Retrieved May 10, 2018,
from http://sanemnet.org/how-costly-are-the-impacts-of-climate-change-in-bangladesh/

Roberts, E. (2012). Bangladesh Leading the Way on Loss and Damage. Loss and Damage in
Vulnerable Countries Initiative. doi:10.3897/bdj.4.e7720.figure2f

11 | P a g e
Shaftel, H. (2016, January 20). What's in a name? Weather, global warming and climate
change. Retrieved May 10, 2018, from https://climate.nasa.gov/resources/global-warming/

Smith J. B., Schellnhuber H.-J., Mirza M. Q., Fankhauser S., Leemans R., Erda L., Ogallo L.,
Pittock A. B., Richels R. G., Rosenzweig C., Safriel U., Tol R. S. J., Weyant J. P., Yohe G. W..
2001. Vulnerability to climate change and reasons for concern: a synthesis. In Climate Change
2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability , ed. McCarthy J. J., Canziani O. F., Leary N. A.,
Dokken D. J., White K. S., 913–67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Williams, M. 2002. Climate Change Information Kit. The United Nations Environment
Programme and the Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC) and sponsored by UNEP, the UN
Development Programme, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN
Institute for Training and Research, the World Meteorological Organization, the World Health
Organization, and the UNFCCC : Geneva, Switzerland

What is climate change? (2014, July 11). Retrieved May 10, 2018, from
http://www.takepart.com/flashcards/what-is-climate-change/

12 | P a g e