Informing humanitarians worldwide 24/7 — a service provided by UN OCHA

Bangladesh

Jamuna Baseline - Baseline study for the project: Joint actions for mitigating climate uncertainties and natural adversities (JAMUNA), 2024-2028

Attachments

Author: Patrick Bolte

Introduction

Our captain carefully scans the waters ahead. The small ripples in the distance indicate shallow waters. He dials down the throttle of the Chinese diesel, steers slightly to the right — and successfully keeps clear of the sandbank underneath. With the monotonous ‘chug-chug-chug’, we are on the way to the next community for this baseline study.

Steering a boat across the Jamuna is a challenge at all times — it requires expertise and good judgment. Especially when water flows are low, as they were during this study in late May, shallow depths and evolving sandbanks are challenging. Yet, boat travel is the only option to reach many communities, in particular those located on the river islands (locally known as chars).

The Jamuna river is part of the Brahmaputra system and refers to the 280 kilometre passage between the points where it joins the Teesta in the north and the Ganges in the south. The Jamuna basin is one of the country’s main watersheds. At its lower end, the Jamuna discharges the equivalent of 8 to 40 olympic-size swimming pools per second.

The river is more than 10 kilometres wide in many places. Carrying lots of sediment from its catchment area, the river always evolves: yesterday’s maps are quickly outdated.

Home to 42.8 million people, the Jamuna basin covers all of Rangpur Division as well as parts of Rajshahi, Mymensingh, and Dhaka Divisions. The basin includes some of the country’s most at-risk districts. Floods are common (in 2020, four consecutive floods proved especially destructive).

For the residents of chars, floods, erosion, and other hazards are great risks, especially as government services and support tend to be severely limited. The accelerating onset of the climate crisis already adds stressors and makes hazards more frequent and severe.

It is in this context that Swiss Red Cross (SRC) and Bangladesh Red Crescent Society (BDRCS) have planned to pursue a new project: entitled “Joint actions to mitigate climate uncertainties and natural adversities” (Jamuna), they seek to raise the resilience of communities and help them adapt to climate change. In so doing, SRC and BDRCS extend a programmatic focus on the Jamuna basin that was started in 2013.

This report is structured in three sections, covering the background, findings, and implications of the research.

Section A contains a brief overview of the planned project (chapter 1) and presents the objectives and approach of the baseline study (chapter 2).

Section B presents the findings. It first looks at the results of the resilience radar (ch. 3) and resilience star (ch. 4), presenting a comprehensive analysis across all eleven resilience dimensions. Chapter 5 presents the baseline data for the logframe indicators. In light of the study findings, it furthermore proposes several adjustments to the logframe itself.

Section C offers guidance towards the approach of the new project. A special focus is given to the question of ‘localisation’ — the notion that BDRCS and its branches are geared to have a stronger role in implementation itself while strengthening its organisational capacity at the same time (ch. 6). Section C furthermore provides a set of overarching recommendations (ch. 7) and ends with concluding remarks (ch. 8).

As with any baseline study, it is crucial that tools can be replicated as part of mid- and endline studies — thereby enabling longitudinal comparisons and the eventual assessment of the project’s impact. Therefore, the appendix contains all key tools (such as questionnaires and facilitation sheets), as well as raw data and data analysis.

While any report is inevitably the product of the author, it must be noted that the combined study of this baseline as well as the evaluation of the preceding project (see RRR evaluation report) would not have been possible without a very strong and dedicated team.

A total of 63 persons supported the studies, working hard and meeting targets despite scorching heat and long days.

Gratitude to the team is also extended to the many drivers and captains (including the one mentioned above) who safely took us to the all sites and back, and to the community members who provided the information that is the foundation for this report. May the report be a small but useful step to reinforce their resilience.