CASE STUDY 18
Advancing Gender-Responsive Local Adaptation through Women’s Leadership in Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Context
Bangladesh faces mounting climate-related risks, including salinity intrusion, cyclones, and sea level rise. These crises affect women disproportionately, undermining their reproductive health, safety, and autonomy. Research and lived experience show direct linkages between environmental stressors and SRHR outcomes: miscarriages linked to saline water, malnutrition due to crop failures, heightened gender-based violence in disaster contexts, and child marriage as a coping mechanism when families lose livelihoods.
Organization
Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF) was established in 2002 as a project of CARE Bangladesh with initial funding from the UK government. The project’s mandate was to strengthen human rights and governance by funding and building the capacity of small civil society organizations across Bangladesh. Within three years, MJF transitioned into an independent national grant-making organization, registered with its own board in 2006. Since then, it has supported over 400 CSOs throughout the country, focusing on human rights, governance, gender equality, prevention of violence against women, and climate change.
Approach
Over two decades, MJF has become one of Bangladesh’s leading grant-making and advocacy organizations, playing a pivotal role in shaping progressive laws. MJF’s approach to climate and gender resilience combines grassroots empowerment, evidence-based advocacy, and institutional reform. They work through a network of over 400 grassroots CSOs in remote, climate-vulnerable areas across the country. MJF gathers evidence from its grassroots partners to drive national and local-level policy advocacy. They organize policy roundtables where CSOs engage with national and local policymakers to share how climate change is impacting women and push for increased investment in climate-vulnerable areas, so that public institutions—including hospitals, schools, and law enforcement—become more responsive to women’s health needs during and after climate shocks. The foundation also works in direct climate-resilient SRHR programming through grassroots civil society partners in the most climate-vulnerable areas of Bangladesh, enabling them to deliver reproductive health services, prevent child marriage, and provide safe spaces during crises. MJF also promotes climate-resilient solutions, such as installing safe water pumps in saline-affected areas and supporting the cultivation of saline-resistant crops and alternative livelihoods that reduce the pressures leading to adverse SRHR outcomes.
Results to Date
The organization is currently implementing climate-resilient SRHR interventions in 14 districts through 13 partner organizations in some of the most climate-affected areas of Bangladesh by enabling small CSOs to deliver SRHR-sensitive services, respond to emergencies, and advocate for women’s needs.
MJF and its partners promote climate-resilient livelihoods and SRHR among 23,000 households through measures such as safe water access, saline-tolerant crops, and alternative livelihoods for women, thereby reducing economic stress that fuels early marriage and unsafe migration. By addressing economic insecurity through alternative livelihoods and climate-resilient agriculture, MJF has created pathways that reduce the pressure of early marriage in times of climate stress. These interventions have been critical in flood- and cyclone-prone regions where child marriage spikes as a coping strategy.
At the national level, MJF has leveraged evidence from its grassroots partners to push for recognition of SRHR in climate adaptation policy. Its advocacy has ensured that women’s health and reproductive rights are discussed alongside infrastructure and disaster risk reduction in government planning. By activating female frontline leaders, MJF is redefining adaptation planning in Bangladesh — transforming it from a top-down technical exercise into a people-centered, feminist process.
“Bangladesh is at risk of not meeting its SDG targets unless climate resilience and women’s health are adequately funded. Donors must understand how dire the situation is. A large section of the population will fall so far behind that they will not be able to be pulled back, and that will impact the overall development and sustainability of the country.”
SHAHEEN ANAM
Executive Director, Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF), Bangladesh
PDF Innovative Approaches to Addressing Climate Change Impacts on Sexual & Reproductive Health: Case Studies from Around the World