Climate change risks and agricultural adaptation strategies: A Cross-sectional survey of the riverine char lands in Bangladesh

Climate change is having an increasingly severe effect on Bangladesh's agricultural sector, and the riverine char lands (remote, flood-prone sandbar islands) are among the most vulnerable areas. This study examines the relationship between char farmers' perceptions of climate change and their adaptive responses, and assesses how socio-demographic and institutional factors are associated with the adoption of those responses. A survey of 267 farmers in Phulchhari Upazila, Gaibandha District, was analyzed using descriptive statistics and linear regression models. Most farmers recognize climate change as a threat, though not as an immediately catastrophic one, and identify drought and sudden flooding as the most serious risks to their livelihoods. This perception is mirrored in a measured pattern of adaptation: farmers have mainly adopted practical, low-cost, agriculturally oriented measures such as crop diversification and agroforestry, indicating a response that is reactive and incremental rather than transformative. Perception and adaptation are strongly associated with the availability of climate information and with financial capacity. Access to information is the factor most strongly associated with both risk perception and adoption, while income is strongly associated with adoption. Extension service access is also positively associated with adoption. In contrast, formal education shows a negative association, and the traditional socio-demographic characteristics (age, gender, and farming experience) are largely insignificant, indicating that adaptation is associated not with social characteristics but with access to knowledge and resources. Overall, the results are consistent with an association linking information, perception, and adaptation. However, disparities in access to information, financial resources, and institutional support may limit more substantial, transformative change. Stronger policy measures are needed to strengthen locally relevant climate information and extension services so that awareness translates more effectively into action. Greater financial support is also essential to enable farmers to adopt more effective adaptation solutions. At the same time, educational and institutional systems should be reoriented to emphasize regionally relevant climate information and the equitable provision of services, in order to reduce disparities in adaptive capacity. Practical Implications The study's findings point to three priorities for strengthening climate resilience in Bangladesh's char lands and comparable settings, each supported by the regression results: expanding access to climate information, strengthening farmers' financial capacity, and improving the reach and consistency of agricultural extension services. Access to information and income were associated with both risk perception and adoption, and extension service access with adoption. These were the factors most strongly associated with adaptive behavior in this study, and they could form the core of a policy response. Beyond these findings, the wider adaptation literature, which emphasizes early warning, climate information and extension support for char farmers, suggests more specific interventions that could translate these priorities into practice in char environments, where mobility and instability limit the effectiveness of fixed infrastructure. For information dissemination, illustrative options include mobile-based alert systems, toll-free agricultural helplines, and community radio programming aligned with the agricultural calendar. For financial support, options could include microfinance products with repayment schedules aligned with seasonal income cycles, weather-indexed insurance with automatic payouts, and mobile money platforms for direct subsidy delivery, given that access to credit is an important barrier to adaptation among hazard-prone rural households in Bangladesh. For extension services, mobile extension units able to follow shifting char settlements, paired with digital platforms offering location-specific advice, may help address the irregular extension contact reported in this study. These specific measures illustrate how the study's core findings could be operationalized, but they have not themselves been tested in this research and should be treated as proposals for further piloting rather than as direct implications of the data. The negative association between education and both risk perception and adoption, together with a possible U-shaped pattern that should be treated as exploratory, may point to a need to integrate climate science and local environmental knowledge into schooling at all levels. There may also be value in developing formal channels for incorporating indigenous knowledge of river and flood behavior into early warning and extension systems. Finally, given the cross-sectional design of this study, continued monitoring and participatory research would help clarify the longer-term effectiveness of these measures and support the development of scalable, evidence-based policies for climate-vulnerable communities more broadly.