Local Knowledge and Climate Change: A Case Study of Bangladesh

Jyotsna Srivastava

Abstract: Climate changes are posing as a major threat to sustainable development in developing countries and this is anticipated to be most vulnerable because of low adaptive capacity and high dependency on climate sensitive resources such as water resources and ecological systems. Local knowledge by its nature include the idea of coping with and adapting to changeable and changing environment. These involve the local population exclusively setting their own view of and approaches to solve the problems and evaluating the results. Consequently, these approaches imply for the context of the countries of the south that external institution should participate in the activities of the local actors concerned instead of vice versa. The paper coveys the idea of local knowledge in context of Bangladesh. The methodologies include: collecting information from available literature, reports, media sources on the issue of Local Knowledge, Adaptation strategies and Climate Change in Bangladesh which briefly highlights ground adaptation practices from available sources. The information gathered is used to examine and document the societal impacts and vulnerability of Bangladesh to floods specially reflecting on coping strategies.

Keywords: Climate change, Local Knowledge, Adaptation, flooding, Regional governance