Relative importance of climate versus socio-environmental development changes to 2050 in rural coastal Bangladesh—a system analysis

Climate change and development are having a profound influence on the integrity of coastal Bangladesh’s people, economy and ecology with climate change widely considered the dominant driver. Our bespoke integrated assessment model (IAM) simulates these changes for rural areas by coupling physical models with economic models, considering shocks like cyclone landfalls, and utilising substantial primary/secondary datasets and stakeholder-derived future scenarios. As such, this study assesses the Bangladesh coastal system’s sensitivity to climate change and policy decisions to 2050. The IAM results suggest that flooding and salinisation have high sensitivity to climatic and environmental drivers, and agricultural productivity is strongly dependent on farming methods and investment in better crop varieties to counteract these changes. Inequality, poverty and GDP per capita are more sensitive to non-climatic drivers. Nonetheless, extreme climatic conditions do impact livelihoods due to economic damage with variable effects across different household types. At least over the next 25 years, development choices (i.e. concrete adaptation actions) will have a similar if not stronger influence on livelihoods and economic wellbeing in rural coastal Bangladesh than climate-driven environmental change. This IAM approach supports decision makers to identify sustainable development pathways that address both current socio-environmental vulnerability as well as develop a more climate-resilient future.