Impact of Climate Related Shocks and Stresses on Nutrition and Food Security in Selected Areas of Rural Bangladesh

This study attempts to break down ‘climate change’ into ‘climate related shocks and stresses in the course of time’ and conceptualizes the food security and nutrition outcomes as combination of the adverse effects of shocks with the strategies that individuals/households develop in response to these shocks. The study is unique in its breadth: it looked into six different types of climate-related shocks and stresses: drought, flood, flash flood, river bank erosion, cyclones and salinity intrusion; their occurrence and effects over a long time period. It is the first analysis of its kind, looking into single shock events, multiple events of the same types, and combined types of events. The study includes both quantitative and qualitative approaches to steer the analysis on whether there are any associations between climate-related shocks and stresses with nutrition and food security outcomes. The HKI Nutrition Surveillance Project dataset from 1998 to 2006 used for the study allows to explore the possible lagged effects of the different events. The findings suggest where we would need to dig deeper and which kinds of data collections we would require to continue in order to enhance our knowledge and subsequent political and operational actions. As such the study gives us a new perspective of viewing our conventional disaster response and rehabilitation approaches and offers a new window for addressing the prolonged effects on affected communities. This research substantially enhance our joint knowledge on climate change and climate related shocks and stresses, people’s lives and livelihood strategies and related nutrition and food security outcomes.