A Nationwide Approach on Measuring Households’ Resilience by Constructing Climate Resilient Livelihoods Index (CRLI) in Rural Bangladesh

Abstract

This study developed households’ Climate Resilient Livelihoods Index (CRLI) in Bangladesh. CRLI indicators were selected based on the Adequacy of Human livelihood conditions for Well-being and Development (AHEAD) framework and FAO resilience tools. The study was designed on cross-sectional data through a country-wide primary survey of 26,925 rural households. At first, we performed logistic regression to gauge the significance and intensity of different livelihood indicators on any specific livelihood indicator. Secondly, we scored each household with the set criteria of different livelihoods accessibility, if any households fulfill the set criteria was “scored 1” and if not “scored 0”. After scoring the households, eight different scores for each household were summed up to construct a composite score of “CRLI”. If any household scored 0 - 2 was considered as low resilient, if any household scored 3 - 5 was considered as moderate resilient and if any household scored 6 - 8 was considered as highly resilient. Additionally, we used ArcMap to visualize the percentage of households in districts with different resilience categories. Findings revealed that nationally 1.7% of households were low resilient, 60% of households were moderate resilient and only 11.48% of households were high resilient. More specifically, only 1.7% of households failed to secure any of the climate-resilient livelihood indicators, and only 0.06% of households secured all of them. Findings also revealed that food secured households had better adaptive capacity due to ensuring access to basic services, more financial capabilities, lower dependency ratio, and physical connectivity. In contrast, households with social safety net coverage had food insecurity, less financial ability, higher dependency ratio, lower education, and income sources. Among 64 counties, Cox’s Bazar, Bandarban, Chuadanga, Barguna, Bhola, Patuakhali, Narail, Kurigram, Sunamganj, Jamalpur, and Netrokona were the most vulnerable in terms of low CRLI. On the other hand, more than 25% of high resilient households were located in Dhaka, Gazipur, and Munshiganj counties. These findings would propel the government to devise appropriate steps in terms of more investment in area-specific local communities for enhancing regional resilience.