ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to examine a novel solutions framework and climate financing to achieve SDGs and Climate Resilience in the Bay of Bengal (BoB) region, a low-income region consisting of the following: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India (Eastern), Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Eastern India consists of West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, the Northeast, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Twenty-five per cent of the region’s combined population lives in extreme poverty, and it has also been identified as one of the top 10 regions in the world that are extremely vulnerable to climate change.
The chapter uses Climate Resilient Development (CRD), a solutions framework developed by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), to address the following: (a) size and significance of the BoB region for climate change and SDG prospects; (b) how/which of the 17 SDGs will be threatened by climate change (CC) – including sea level rise, storms and coastal flooding, cities and sub-regions at greatest risk, and extreme heat and humidity caused heat stress, affecting multiple SDGs; (c) status of trade, infrastructure and energy/development policy and prospects within and between BoB and the rest-of-the-world (RoW), taking CC into context; (d) institutions and capacity for CRD; (e) why/which partnerships within the region and with RoW are key to CRD, especially to scale-up climate financing and to achieve SDGs.
