Climate change in Bangladesh

Summary

As a developing country subject to potentially serious damage as a result of climate change, Bangladesh has received significant subsidies from development partners to invest in adaptation and mitigation. Pervasive corruption in the allocation and use of these funds however has resulted in the termination of many large investment flows. The impact of this corruption has significantly affected the country’s ability to prepare for the effects of climate change. This project focuses on examining the multiplicity of agencies involved in the allocation, monitoring and implementation of climate change funds to understand how to direct resources more efficiently. It is also concerned with understanding how to utilise well-mobilised grassroots organisations more effectively.

The corruption issue

The interdependence between monitoring agencies, allocation agencies, and political organisations has made effective control of resource allocation difficult, resulting in serious rent capture.

Theory of Change

IF climate change investments are targeted to local projects that have been tested to meet demands of local stakeholders with aligned interests, and if collective action is organized to include affected parties with the participation of local governments supporting the protection of these interests and exerting pressure on authorities
THEN unproductive resource capture and leakage of climate change investment resources will be reduced
BECAUSE official monitoring will be supported by local stakeholders and communities who will invest their own time and resources to protect their interests in climate change investments.

Research methods

A diverse range of qualitative research methods will be used for this study:

Institutional mapping will be used to identify, understand and assess the existing distribution of power, authority, legal provisions and regulatory frameworks between key actors
Conventional qualitative methods including Key Informant, CSO member and other stakeholder Interviews and Community level Stakeholder Analysis will be used to collect primary data
Force Field Analysis will be used to identify and analyse the opposing set of forces working for or against a process that ultimately affect decision- making
Focused Group Discussion (FGD) will be used to gather collective information from a wider group of respondents with similar backgrounds or experiences to discuss a specific topic of interest
Document/Content analysis will be relied upon to analyse and interpret secondary data generated to address the prime research questions of the study
Case studies and political economy analysis will be used with the Transparency International Bangladesh case studies.

Partners

Salahuddin Aminuzzaman, Iftekgar Zaman, Sumaiya Khair (Transparency International Bangladesh) and Mushtaq Khan (SOAS); Muhammad Zakir Hossain Khan (Research Associate)