Bangladeshi children are suffering from stunting, underweight due to climate change: Study

Bangladeshi children are increasingly suffering from stunting and underweight due to the impacts of climate change, according to study.

The study revealed that exposure to rainfall variations during pregnancy significantly affects children's physical growth, particularly reducing height-for-age (stunting) and weight-for-age (underweight) scores.

The Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh (PRI) organised a roundtable today (11 December) and where presented the study findings.

From "Health Effects of Climate Change and Mitigating Effects of Climate Policy: Evidence from Bangladesh" titled Asian Development Bank (ADB) senior economist presented Minhaj Mahmud presented the keynote paper.

Minhaj Mahmud said, "We identify that climate financing projects related to adaptation and mitigation have some mitigating effects on such adversities, by improving children's anthropometric outcomes."

He said, "Due to its geographic location and land characteristics, Bangladesh is prone to recurrent flooding and frequent tropical storm events. 26% of the population are affected by cyclones and 70% live in flood-prone regions. An agricultural economy with many people living below the poverty line income, people often have no or limited means to fight the harms of climate change and climate extremes."

"They also have lower ability to spend on healthcare, among other important items, and therefore, it is possible that lower income people can experience the climate- and disaster-inflicted health adversities disproportionately."

Using three rounds of the household survey data from Bangladesh, they empirically estimate the childhood health effects of in utero exposure to rainfall variations and the mitigating effects of climate policy on these rainfall-induced health adversities.

The economist further said, "We focus on children aged 0-60 months. We use three rounds of the Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS), 2011-12, 2015 and 2018-19, for children's health outcome variables. Sample size is 6,503 rural households from 325 primary sampling units."

Complete data are available for a total of 6,802 children: Born between 2007 and 2018. Of them, 3,475 are male children and 3,327 are female children.

The past decades have been the warmest in the last hundred thousand years spurring changes to the earth's climate that are unprecedented in recent human history. Every 0.5-degree Celsius rise of global temperature will cause discernible increases in the frequency and severity of heat exposures, heavy rainfall events and regional droughts. 

Minhaj said, "Since health adversities are transmitted through the damages to agricultural outputs due to rainfall variations, it is important to investigate whether the implemented climate policies have benefited the agricultural sector.

"We therefore recommend more concerted efforts in allocation of climate funding that can be used to reduce climate risks and consequently, climate-induced health adversities."

PRI Chairman Dr Zaidi Sattar presided over the roundtable. Khurshid Alam, Executive Director, PRI gave the closing remarks.