Bagerhat district in Bangladesh faced some of the harsh realities of climate change over the years. In the last two decades, many farmers in this region noticed a significant rise in heat waves during summertime, increased desertification, lack of rainfall and severe salinity intrusion in water. Situated in the south west coastal belt of the country, Bagerhat has salinity intrusion in almost every layer of the soil and paired with the other adversities of climate change, has resulted in immense socioeconomic downfalls for the farmers; now they can only cultivate one type of crop once a year in place of three or four. For the rest of the year, the land remains unfertile and dry, leaving farmers with minimum or no income.

Hares and his family dreamed of building a strong brick house that would resile the harsh windstorms and rainfalls during natural calamities, which have been occurring so often in this area. But that dream too, had to be forgone due to economically unfavorable conditions. The family resides in a small house made from mud and bamboo with the roof made from fragile tin which is vastly exposed and vulnerable to climate adversities.

Local Government Initiative on Climate Change, (LoGIC) project, led by the Local Government Division of the Ministry of Local Government Rural Development and Cooperatives, is a joint 4-year initiative of the Government of Bangladesh, UNDP, UNCDF, the European Union and Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). LoGIC is phase II of UNCDF’s global Project Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL) in Bangladesh.

The project uses UNCDF transferred Performance Based Climate Resilience Grants (PBCRG) to climate vulnerable local governments as additional financing and complements the general grant resources provided by the Government to all Union Parishads (UPs). The specific purpose of PBCRG is to help UPs make investments to strengthen resilience to climate and disaster impacts, covering infrastructure and public services for the poor.

When farmers like Hares raised this issue at Union Parishad meetings, by working with the local government LoGIC project facilitated the implementation of a solar based agricultural irrigation plant by redirecting water from nearby natural canals which is 4 kms away from this plot of land.

Farmers are now able to harvest not only one but three types of crops throughout the year in this 2000-acre land which has initiated socioeconomic transformations with more room for crop diversification and higher production yields of vegetables and rice, which meant an increase in profits and earnings of the farmers.

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