Indigenous Resilience and Adaptation to the Impact of Climate Change in Rangamati, Bangladesh: A Survey-based Study

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-884-4_4How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Climate Change; Adaptation; Vulnerability; Indigenous Community; Climate Impacts

Abstract

Climate change significantly threatens the livelihoods and cultural heritage of indigenous communities in Bangladesh, especially in the Chattogram Hill Tracts consisting of Rangamati, Bandarban, and Khagrachari districts. This study explores how the Chakma tribe in Rangamati has adapted to and remained resilient to climate-induced disasters including landslides, droughts, river erosion, and changing weather patterns. Structured survey questionnaires were prepared to collect information from 100 participants on demographics and real-life experiences related to the socio-economic impacts of natural disasters. The findings indicate that many participants experienced changes in their living arrangements and little assistance from government or non-government organizations, resulting in extensive financial losses and disruptions to their professions. The correlation matrix between profession and financial loss is almost unity for farmers, 0.87 for businessmen, and the rest in the range of 0.15-0.29. On the other hand, the correlation between the willingness of people to migrate to other places and changing professions with their age was found -0.92 and -0.81. Again, the relationship between the willingness to change profession with financial loss was 0.49. Lastly, the correlation matrix between receiving financial aid and willingness to migrate to other places and changing professions is -0.75. The study describes how urgently customized policy actions are needed to improve Indigenous populations’ ability to adapt and lessen the adverse impacts of climate change. The findings highlight the significance of protecting indigenous cultural heritage while encouraging climate-resilient and sustainable development.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Sumaya Tabassum
AU  - Md. Sultanul Islam
AU  - Likhon Chandra Roy
AU  - Md. Asadur Rahman
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/11/18
TI  - Indigenous Resilience and Adaptation to the Impact of Climate Change in Rangamati, Bangladesh: A Survey-based Study
BT  - Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Engineering Research, Innovation, and Education 2025 (ICERIE 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 26
EP  - 34
SN  - 2352-5401
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-884-4_4
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-884-4_4
ID  - Tabassum2025
ER  -