## 7 Climate Change and Adaptability
Hence, adaptive water management capacity in Bangladesh is crucial to tackling these climate change impacts. Adaptive capacity has been defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their 5 th assessment report as \"The ability of systems, institutions, humans and other organisms to adjust to potential damage, to take advantage of opportunities, or to respond to consequence\" [110]. If a country has a greater adaptive capacity, that ensures a higher possibility of resilience to climate variability and extremes. The adaptive capacity allows for changing the current state/practices to a resilient state to face the impacts of climate-related hazards when they are unavoidable. For a long time, the people of Bangladesh have adapted to the risk of floods, droughs, and cyclones with their indigenous knowledge and experience and with recent/updated knowledge as well. In recent decades, there have been some notable improvements in increasing the adaptive capacity of water resource management. Water resource management systems have implemented several adaptive measures to reduce the impact of climate hazards, such as the improvement and use of modern technology in the regulation and distribution of water for irrigation, food production, and water supply and irrigation schemes to enable farmers to grow crops in the areas affected by the floods and droughs. Many flood defense and drainage measures have also been adopted to reduce flooding and the impacts of flooding, such as polders, embankments, cyclone shelters, and cyclone-resistant housing. In addition to structural measures, some non-structural measures have also been introduced, such as early warnings about climatic events, including heavy rainfall, high temperatures, hailstorms, and floods, improved access to digital information and knowledge, training and knowledge on advanced technology to cultivate, awareness-raising programs, and the conjunctive use of water supply sources. Funding/financial support is crucial in implementing effective and appropriate adaptation programs. The Bangladesh government has invested in a diverse portfolio of water development and disaster management schemes since the 1960s, which have significantly reduced the damages and losses from extreme weather events over time. The World Bank (2010) has estimated that these investments are around USD 10 billion. However, the noteworthy national-level adaptation strategies, programs, and plans include the National Adaptation Program of Action (NAPA)-2005 (updated 2009) and the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP)-2009. The general objectives of these national documents are to incorporate potential adaptation measures into the overall development planning processes, make development resilient to climate change, and promote sustainable development in Bangladesh. These documents have identified that, even with this infrastructure in place, around 500 million programs are needed for priority actions/measures, such as improving disaster management, research and information management, capacity building and public awareness programs, and urgent infrastructure development, such as increasing the number of cyclone shelters and the improvement of drainage systems [105].