# Cities, Climate Change, and Sustainable Development: Interplay in the Context of Bangladesh September 22, 2025 Mohammad Tarikul Islam - [ Blog ](/news-categories/blog) Evidently, environmental sustainability and urban resilience go hand in hand. There are now climate change-related policy discussions, awareness-raising campaigns, and concrete actions being taken at the regional, national, and municipal levels of governance. Climate change is also no longer a sector-specific issue; instead, it necessitates coordinated, cross-sectoral activities in the environmental, economic, social, and cultural domains. It is well known that a wide range of factors contribute to both the causes and the effects of climate change, including production, distribution, and consumption models, economic resource allocation, the availability of natural resources, migration, urbanisation, social and cultural values, as well as individual and societal behavioural patterns. The significance of city government cannot be overstated in order to achieve [SDG 11](https://www.sdg.gov.bd/page/allgoals/4#11), which aims to renew and plan cities and other human settlements in a way that offers opportunities for everyone, with access to basic services, energy, housing, transportation, and green public spaces while reducing resource use and environmental impact. Due to its funnel-shaped shoreline and low-lying topography, Bangladesh is particularly vulnerable to climate change, which further exposes the country to cyclones and tidal surges that cause seasonal flooding. Bangladesh is urbanising quickly. The city corporations and municipalities can play a crucial role in assisting the urban poor in recovering from the pandemic and getting ready to manage future shocks because about 36% of the population lives in urban areas. The following chart shows the [last 40 years analysis of occurring natural hazard](https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/bangladesh/vulnerability). ![Graph displays average annual natural hazard occurrence between 1980 and 2020. Storm 42%; drought 1%; earthquake 3%; epidemic 9%; extreme temperature 8%; flood 27%; landslide 2% and miscellaneous accident 7%](/sites/g/files/omnuum6866/files/2025-09/Picture1.jpg) According to the [Climate Risk Index 2021](https://www.germanwatch.org/sites/germanwatch.org/files/2021-01/cri-2021_table_10_countries_most_affected_from_2000_to_2019.jpg), based on data from 2000 to 2019, Bangladesh lost 11,450 individuals, suffered $3.72 billion in economic losses, and had 185 extreme weather events as a result of climate change from 2000 to 2019. Eight of the ten most vulnerable countries listed on the long-term index, including Bangladesh, have low or lower-middle incomes. Citizens' livelihoods in these countries rely on fewer assets. Bangladesh is ranked fifth in terms of [economic losses](https://www.tbsnews.net/environment/climate-change/bangladesh-remains-7th-most-vulnerable-climate-change-191044), indicating that the economy is consistently at risk from climate disasters, which impact human health, the economy, agriculture, and the ecosystem. The country is especially susceptible to climate change due to these variables: a large population base, extensive poverty, and weak institutional development. Bangladesh will need to tackle climate change as a cross-cutting issue that will affect the ability to achieve any of the other objectives if it is to be as successful in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals as it was in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. Bangladesh may achieve these goals by creating national plans of action that emphasise climate resilience and by strengthening urban and rural local government institutions. Future cities are not, as one might think, some far-off utopia where people and services could move one beautiful day. Future cities, or the idea of a sustainable one, would instead entail a gradual and coordinated change in urban design, the city's value proposition, and the laws that control energy consumption, land use, and urban planning. The integration of renewable energy sources into primary grids, the provision of infrastructure for electric vehicle charging, and better city planning, including the construction of cities that can accommodate renewable energy sources, must be at the forefront of the conversation about the city of the future. [Urban planning in Bangladesh has not taken a very sustainable tack](https://www.tbsnews.net/supplement/urban-planning-bangladesh-challenges-and-opportunities-362911). For instance, developing cities in Bangladesh have recently taken delight in constructing enormous flyovers that swiftly transport vehicles from one location to another without any delays caused by obstacles like traffic lights. Instead, we have neglected the need for human-driven paratransit systems and failed to make these communities bikeable and walkable. On a long stretch of flyovers with no service facilities that a "human" could use, it's depressing to witness regular bikers squeezing through a sea of cars. In Bangladesh's urban slums, problems including waterlogging, torrential rain, inadequate drainage, poor sanitation, electrocution risks, and fire hazards are frequent occurrences. The commonality of the occurrences suggests that Bangladeshi slum problems have similar characteristics, although the severity of the problems varies from one slum to another across regions. Given the dynamics of the issues, Bangladeshi municipal governments, particularly those in the capital Dhaka, have provided various types of support in order to mobilise local resources and enhance infrastructure and services to make the slum community resilient. [Bangladesh's achievement on SDG 11 indicators has been inconsistent](https://cpd.org.bd/covid-19-and-sdg-11-making-cities-liveable-syed-yusuf-saadat/). Target 11.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals requires that by 2030, all people have access to adequate, safe, and affordable housing, and slums are upgraded. In 1991, 87.3% of the urban population of Bangladesh resided in slums; by 2014, that number had dropped to 55.1%. During the period from 1991 to 2014, the percentage of urban residents living in slums declined by 1.04 percent every year, on average. However, the overall number of urban slum dwellers climbed from 19.99 million in 1991 to 29.27 million in 2014. This indicates that the urban slum population rose by an average of 403,000 each year between 1991 and 2014. Cities have a lot of potential to manage energy efficiency and promote clean transportation in the direction of a sustainable future. Cities have the potential to lead an economy's overall sustainable development. Bangladesh must acknowledge the increasing demand for sustainable energy right away, and all nations must cooperate to do the same. The national government and local governments both need to get involved in this. Bangladesh's top focus on urban development. Urban governments are therefore in a good position to implement strategies for managing energy, planning effectively, and managing cities to foster resilience. For a nation like Bangladesh, where complex city activities and a diverse geographic and climatic environment determine energy consumption, it is important that state policy and city-level implementation work closely together. There is an increasing need for an "enabling environment," which is defined as one in which everyone has an equal opportunity to participate in decision-making and in which there is trust and compassion between residents of slums and the ward council members and local political leaders. When interpreting the capacity-accessibility matrix, the "restrictive" component is important for starting and carrying out development projects in urban slums. The ability and accessibility of the individual in the city government (city corporation) authority's decision-making system can be improved by a progression of the "enabling environment" connected with the "participative" dimension. Instead of disregarding community and private initiatives that have been successful in reaching service users, the local government needs to share responsibility for service delivery with them. An efficient public-private collaboration can guarantee efficient solid waste management in Bangladeshi cities. The city government's (city corporation's) activities should explicitly incorporate the qualities of a resilient community, such as creating an informed, healthy community, organising the community, encouraging social connectivity, developing infrastructure and service facilities, creating economic opportunities, and lastly creating a conducive environment to manage the natural resources owned by the community's residents. The city government, like the [city corporation](http://www.dncc.gov.bd/) in Bangladesh, must collaborate with a wide range of actors, including civil society organisations active in the fields of culture and the environment, cultural organisations, citizen initiatives, and academic experts, among others, due to the broad scope and multi-level nature of the change required, the distributed character of specialised knowledge, and the need to generate shared understanding, narratives, and ways of life for making the cities sustainable. Moreover, the Bangladesh government must enhance global human settlement planning and management capabilities by 2030, with a focus on achieving equitable and sustainable urbanisation. *By* [*Mohammad Tarikul Islam*](https://hhi.harvard.edu/people/mohammad-tarikul-islam)*, Visiting Scientist, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and Visiting Professor at Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard.* Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)