Caritas set up groups of community members and provided them with saplings. Reforestation addresses the threat of local climate change by reducing erosion (thereby providing a defense against floods), retaining moisture in soil (thereby helping crops, which in turn helps reduce vulnerability), creating a harvestable forest resource that can be sold of used for fuel, and creating a stock of standing biomass that can be used in the event of a calamity.

Bangladesh regularly suffers from floods due to its position in the flat delta of three rivers, the  Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna, damaging houses, which need repair and maintenance on a regular basis.  Aiming to improve this situation, the Intermediate Technology Development Group conducted a participatory rural appraisal (PRA) to study the local building techniques and materials available in the Faridpur district to develop feasible and cost effective flood resistant housing options for the poor.  The PRA identified who is doing what, in order to ensure participation and capacity buildi

The Intermediate Technology Development Group-Bangladesh’s needs-assessment in three villages in the Faridpur district looked at fisheries to identify opportunities for interventions that will not only reduce their vulnerability to floods but will improve the food security situation of households at the time of disaster.  In the past, villagers incurred losses when fish floated away as floodwater poured into fish ponds. To minimize the knowledge gap, ITDG-B developed and disseminated appropriate flood-friendly fisheries technologies.

In this project, led by SouthSouthNorth and Caritas, different types of capacity-building activities including learning-by-doing type activities are implemented to enhance adaptive capacity of the targeted communities. Capacity building will target the areas of agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture, alternative livelihoods development and small entrepreneurship, access to safe water, and disaster risk reduction.

South-Central Bangladesh is prone to extended monsoon flooding and water-logging from the ocean and the Ganges and Januma Rivers. Various climate change studies have revealed that this region will be more prone to flooding and water logging due to heavy rainfall and other predicted effects of climate change. Erratic rainfall and temperature fluctuation are hampering crop production and livelihood activities in the area.

Communities in Bangladesh recover from floods by mending houses and boats (neighbours help each other); draining  floodwater from agriculture land; choosing appropriate rice varieties (late transplanting cultivars) or bringing seedlings from other places; choosing a quick-growing low-cost non-rice minor crop; and skipping, if deemed appropriate, the entire cropping season.