Published: 12:15 AM, 04 November 2026
Climate Change Takes a High Toll on Bangladesh
Shafiqul Islam Khokon
Climate change has been a widely discussed issue for several years. People across the world are increasingly hearing about it. As the impacts of climate change become more visible across the planet, the term itself is being used more frequently. But while Bangladesh is suffering increasingly severe consequences of climate change, is the country receiving compensation commensurate with the scale of its losses?
Bangladesh bears very little responsibility for climate change. Compared with developed countries, even describing its contribution as small may overstate the case. Yet Bangladesh repeatedly appears on lists of countries most vulnerable to climate change.
Bangladesh accounts for less than 1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, the lives and livelihoods of millions of people are increasingly at risk from rising sea levels, cyclones, storm surges, floods, riverbank erosion, salinity intrusion, droughts, and heatwaves.
In early 2026, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reported that Bangladesh needs more than US$26 billion annually in climate finance, particularly to support adaptation and address climate-related loss and damage. At the same time, the Bangladesh government has acknowledged that the country receives only a fraction of the funding it needs.
The question is: How much money is Bangladesh actually receiving in response to these enormous losses? And are affected families, individuals, and institutions genuinely receiving compensation?
To answer these questions, we must first understand the difference between climate finance and compensation. Are we paying sufficient attention to this distinction?
A Need for $26 Billion, but Where Is the Compensation?
Bangladesh's National Adaptation Plan (NAP) for 2023-2050 requires an estimated total investment of approximately US$230 billion. The plan covers numerous sectors, including riverbank erosion, coastal degradation, flooding, salinity intrusion, climate-induced migration, agriculture, disaster management, and climate-resilient infrastructure.
In other words, Bangladesh's financial needs cannot be met through funding for just a handful of projects. Addressing them requires long-term national and international financing.
Another important figure comes from Bangladesh's official Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0) document, which reports that more than US$587 million in financing has been approved for Bangladesh under the Green Climate Fund (GCF). Meanwhile, the GCF's current country page lists US$464 million in GCF financing for Bangladesh across 10 projects.
These figures represent approved financing. They cannot be interpreted as compensation that has directly reached people affected by climate change in Bangladesh's coastal regions. This is where the central problem lies.
On the one hand, Bangladesh needs more than US$26 billion in climate finance annually. On the other, approved funding from international climate funds amounts to only several hundred million dollars. Moreover, much of this funding is project-based rather than intended to compensate individuals for their losses.
What Are Coastal Communities Losing?
For a farmer in southern or southwestern Bangladesh, climate change is not an abstract term discussed at international conferences. It means rice fields ruined by saline water.
For someone living beside a river, it means watching their home disappear into the water after a single night of riverbank erosion. For a fisher, it means an increasingly uncertain livelihood.
For a coastal woman, it means travelling long distances to collect safe drinking water. For a family, it may mean losing a home, a piece of land, livestock, or a family's primary breadwinner.
These losses have been accompanied by years of suffering. The anguish of families whose fishermen disappear at sea, and the grief of those left behind, have become all too familiar.
Bangladesh government's own climate finance information explicitly identifies rising sea levels, saltwater intrusion, cyclones and storm surges, floods, extreme temperatures, droughts, and damage to livelihoods and infrastructure as major climate-related threats.
A recent World Bank assessment also indicates that salinity in coastal waters and soils is increasing, affecting the lives of millions of people. A survey covering 250 coastal villages identified the shortage of climate-resilient infrastructure as one of the most urgent unmet needs.
Who Will Compensate the Victims of Riverbank Erosion?
Riverbank erosion deserves greater attention in Bangladesh's climate justice debate.
A person affected by riverbank erosion does not simply lose a house. They may lose their homestead, agricultural land, trees, ponds, shops, livestock, and the familiar landscape in which their social and community life has developed.
The National Adaptation Plan acknowledges the need for substantial investment to address riverbank and coastal erosion. For example, it estimates expenditures of approximately Tk 587 billion for riverbank stabilization and Tk 755 billion to address coastal erosion.
But there is a fundamental distinction here: money spent on constructing river protection embankments is not the same as money paid to farmers who have lost their land to a river.
No amount of compensation can fully undo the damage. What has been lost cannot simply be restored. Some losses can never truly be repaired.
An embankment may be constructed, but who will account for the value of the land, homes, livelihoods, and social ties already lost by a family whose homestead has disappeared?
The answer to this question remains insufficiently clear within Bangladesh's climate finance framework.
The Scale of Losses Is Far from Small
The August 2024 floods alone illustrate the magnitude of the problem. According to the World Bank's Global Rapid Post-Disaster Damage Estimation (GRADE) assessment, the median estimate of Bangladesh's direct economic losses from those floods was approximately US$1.676 billion.
The estimated damage included:
US$640 million in infrastructure losses.
US$468 million in agricultural losses.
US$403 million in residential buildings and household assets.
These figures represent the damage caused by just one major flooding event.
If we also account for years of riverbank erosion, coastal land degradation, salinity intrusion, declining agricultural production, lost livelihoods, the loss of family members who earn their living at sea, and the economic and non-economic consequences of displacement, the overall picture becomes far more severe.
An NAP-based analysis for Bangladesh estimates that annual climate-related losses averaged approximately Tk 33.3 billion during 2016-2021.
In other words, losses occur every year. Yet international mechanisms for compensating these losses have not progressed at a pace commensurate with the reality on the ground.
The Loss and Damage Fund: A Source of Hope, but a Long Road Ahead
One major achievement of the climate justice movement has been the establishment of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD).
The fund is intended to help particularly vulnerable developing countries address the economic and non-economic losses and damages caused by climate change.
By the end of 2025, pledges from various countries to the fund had reached approximately US$817 million. During the same period, the fund established arrangements to provide US$250 million in grants for its initial programming period in 2025-2026.
These figures may sound substantial, but they remain extremely limited compared with the scale of climate-related losses worldwide.
More importantly, the US$250 million is not allocated exclusively to Bangladesh. It is intended to support the initial financing framework for vulnerable developing countries collectively.
Therefore, there is no basis for claiming that every family affected by riverbank erosion in coastal Bangladesh is receiving direct compensation from this fund.
This is precisely why Bangladesh must continue to advocate for the effective implementation of the Loss and Damage Fund.
Climate Loans and Compensation Are Not the Same
Another issue requires clear public discussion: Bangladesh receives international loans and development financing to address climate change.
In June 2025, the Asian Development Bank approved a US$400 million loan to support climate-resilient and inclusive development in Bangladesh, alongside additional co-financing.
The World Bank has also provided substantial financing to help Bangladesh address disaster and climate risks. According to World Bank information, approximately US$1.4 billion in its financing has helped strengthen the resilience of around 6.7 million people in Bangladesh through shelters, roads, embankments, protective infrastructure, and afforestation.
Such funding is important for Bangladesh. However, it would be incorrect to describe these amounts as compensation paid to people who have suffered climate-related losses.
Loans must eventually be repaid. Compensation, by contrast, represents recognition of harm and a means of providing redress-particularly when responsibility for causing the damage and the burden of suffering it are not distributed equally.
Bangladesh Needs an Accounting of Losses in Every Household
To achieve climate justice, it is not enough to ask only how much money Bangladesh has received.
We must also ask:
How much of the funding consists of grants?
How much consists of loans?
How much is allocated to adaptation?
How much is intended to address loss and damage?
How much is spent on national-level infrastructure?
And how much reaches affected people directly?
The final question is the most important.
Even if millions of dollars are spent on a project in Dhaka, climate finance remains little more than an accounting figure for a family that has lost its homestead to riverbank erosion if that family receives no fair remedy for its losses.
This is why Bangladesh's initiative to develop its first National Climate Finance Strategy is so important.
In January 2026, UNDP reported that Bangladesh was developing this strategy to narrow the gap between its climate finance needs and the funding it receives. The government is also emphasizing faster disbursement of post-disaster funding and better delivery of financial support to vulnerable communities.
When a family loses its ancestral homestead, a village repeatedly faces riverbank erosion, a farmer can no longer cultivate land that generations of their family have worked because of salinity, or a household is forced into an urban slum by climate-induced displacement, the consequences extend far beyond financial damage.
Shafiqul Islam Khokon is a columnist
and a researcher. He can be reached at [email protected]
