Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan 2008.

This Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP), as a cross-sectoral policy document, is a 10-year programme (2009-2018) to build the capacity and resilience of the country to meet the challenge of climate change. Its main purpose is to articulate a strategy to manage climate change and its impacts in Bangladesh leading towards an action plan of programmes addressing the needs for substantive interventions with a definitive timeline for their implementation. The needs of the poor and vulnerable, including women and children, are prioritised in activities to be implemented under the Action Plan. The Action Plan comprises immediate, short, medium and long-term programmes based upon six pillars: 1. Food security, social protection and health; 2. Comprehensive disaster management; 3. Infrastructure; 4. Research and knowledge management; 5. Mitigation and low carbon development; 6. Capacity building and institutional.
The BCCSAP seeks to eliminate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. The actions to be implemented include collection and preservation of local varieties of robust cultivars and documentation of their characteristics, research to develop climate resilient varieties, development of climate resilient cropping systems, fisheries and livestock systems to ensure local and national food security, etc.
It is expected that the actions set out in this BCCSAP will not only contribute to attracting increase levels of finance for climate change, but will also have a significant impact on alleviation of poverty (including poverty in rural areas). Actions include to increase the resilience of vulnerable groups, including women and children, through development of community-level adaptation, livelihood diversification, better access to basic services and social protection and scaling up.
The overall objectives of the BCCSAP is to increase the country's resilience to climate change; reduce the risks climate change poses to national development; and rapidly develop the country, following a low-carbon growth path. The programmes hereby envisaged include improvement of disaster forecasting and early warning, awareness raising and public education towards climate resilience, risk management against loss on income and property, adaptation actions in fisheries and livestock sectors, repair and maintenance of infrastructure, revision of sectoral policies for climate resilience, lower emission from agricultural land, etc.
In the field of governance, the programmes designed concern strengthening institutional capacity for climate change management, and main-streaming climate change in national, sectoral and spatial development. The Climate Change Action Plan will be implemented under the overall guidance of the National Environment Committee. The implementation of the BCCSAP will be financed through Government's own resources and external support.