Impact of Climate Change on the Achievement Of Reducing Child Mortality in Bangladesh

Abstract

Climate change is considered as one of the prime challenge for the country. Recent published reports have found Bangladesh as one of the most vulnerable countries and would be the worst victim due to climate change. Children are the future of a nation. Considering this issue the country has taken various initiatives in reducing child mortality and had tremendous success record in achieving the goal 4 of MDGs. Relationship between climate change and reduction of child mortality is complex to analyse. to analyse. ARDL bounds test is carried out to explore the existence of short-run dynamics and long-run equilibrium relationship between climate change and child mortality using secondary time series data in the context of Bangladesh. Empirical findings confirms long-run association – ship among the variables of the study and the model is found stable. Generally climate change worsening the child mortality scenario. Increase in temperature and rainfall reduces child mortality in Bangladesh. Since rainfall is decreasing so ultimately it worsening child mortality scenario. Reasons behind such temperature mortality relationship might temperature not yet exceed its threshold level. In the short-run, unidirectional causality from all choice variables towards dependent variable is identified. The error correction term of the model is 0.9347, found negative and highly significant which confirms overall significance of the model. The findings also ensures stability of the achievement in the ling run. The study therefore recommends incorporating the climate resilience policy in formulating national and regional development planning.