A study indicates that global warming is causing Bangladeshi children to experience stunting and have malnourishment issues.
It reveals that when children are exposed to variations in rainfall while in the womb, their growth outcomes suffer significantly, particularly in terms of height-for-age (stunting) and weight-for-age (underweight) scores.
The Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh (PRI) organized a roundtable and presented the study findings on Wednesday. Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Senior Economist Minhaj Mahmud presented the keynote paper.
Minhaj Mahmud said: "We found that climate financing projects aimed at adaptation and mitigation help improve children's growth and health outcomes."
He further added: “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 often find themselves with no or limited means to fight the harms of global warming and climate extremes.”
“They also have a 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 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.
Minhaj Mahmud 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. The sample size is 6,503 rural households from 325 primary sampling units.”
The study found that variations in rainfall during pregnancy lead to reduced height and weight in children. For each unit of rainfall variation, there is a change of 0.0015 units in height and 0.0014 units in weight relative to age. Similarly, weight is affected by 0.0008 units in relation to length due to the same reason.
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°C rise of global temperature will cause discernible increases in the frequency and severity of heat exposures, heavy rainfall events and regional droughts.
Minhaj Mahmud said: "Since health issues are linked to damage in agriculture from rainfall changes, it's important to see if climate policies have helped 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.”
Dr Zaidi Sattar, chairman of PRI presided over the roundtable. Khurshid Alam, executive director, PRI gave the closing remarks.
