On September 3, 2026, The New York Times published a sobering investigative report titled “Is Your City Prepared for Climate Disaster?” The article summarized a new global resilience index developed by AlphaGeo, ranking 72 major cities on their preparedness for climate shocks — floods, heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and coastal storms. The results were startling. Nine of the ten least resilient cities in the world are located in South Asia, a region that has contributed minimally to global greenhouse gas emissions yet bears a disproportionate share of climate impacts. This is timely as major governmental, non-profit, corporate, and other actors converge in New York City this month for the United Nations General Assembly and associated New York Climate Week. Eyes will be on how international cooperation can potentially progress a just transition just weeks after the UN Environment Programme Report projected that the world will pass the 1.5C global warming threshold the 2015 Paris Climate Accords sought to avoid.
Among the least resilient cities in the index were Dhaka, ranked 4th least resilient, and Chittagong, ranked 9th. For Bangladeshis, these rankings were painful but not surprising. They reflect a reality long understood by residents, planners, and policymakers: our cities are not failing — they are under siege, especially as deepening climate change continues to escalate climate disasters. This essay examines why Dhaka and Chittagong scored so poorly, what structural forces shape their vulnerability, and what realistic pathways exist to strengthen their resilience.
Understanding the rankings: How AlphaGeo measures climate risk
AlphaGeo’s Climate Risk & Resilience Index (CRRI) differs sharply from traditional academic models. Instead of treating exposure, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity as parallel concepts, AlphaGeo uses a sequential, investment-grade equation designed to show how much climate danger remains after accounting for real-world defences:
The Physical Risk Score represents raw climate hazard intensity across key hazard layers — such as extreme heat, inland flooding, coastal flooding, wildfires, hurricane-force winds, and severe drought — mapped at a highly localized spatial resolution. Dhaka’s position on a low-lying floodplain and Chittagong’s exposure to cyclones and storm surges mean both cities begin with extremely high physical risk.
The Adaptation Delta measures how much of that danger is offset by human systems. AlphaGeo operationalizes adaptation into three layers: municipal adaptation capacity (drainage systems, embankments, cooling infrastructure, shelters), societal resilience (governance quality, economic strength, infrastructure robustness, social stability), and asset-level remediation (retrofits, elevation, localized flood defences). Together, these layers determine how much risk can be shaved off the raw hazard score.
The final output, the Resilience-Adjusted Risk (RAJ), is the score used to rank cities. A city with high hazards but strong adaptation may still achieve moderate RAJ. A city with extreme hazards and weak adaptation will not.
Dhaka and Chittagong fall squarely into the latter category. While Dhaka achieves a 40% adaptation rate (offsetting 24 points from its world-highest raw score of 60) and Chittagong shaves off ~35% (16 points from a baseline of 46), these adaptation deltas are modest compared to the immense scale of their respective threats.
- In Dhaka, critical urban wetlands and natural drainage canals have been systematically encroached upon by rapid development, leaving its overloaded municipal drainage systems unable to handle heavy monsoonal rain.
- In Chittagong, the crisis is compounded by geography; its vulnerable lower coastal delta leaves municipal channels heavily exposed to sea-level storm surges and high-tide backwater flooding that physically blocks the city’s drainage outflow.
Across both cities, informal settlements remain highly exposed, municipal capacity is constrained by fragmented governance, and societal resilience is weakened by persistent infrastructure gaps. At the asset level, much of the built environment lacks meaningful climate retrofits.
Even after AlphaGeo subtracts the Adaptation Delta from the Physical Risk Score, the RAJ scores for both cities remain among the highest in the world. Their low ranking is not simply a reflection of geography or governance; it is the product of a harsh equation in which extreme hazards meet under-resourced defences. Dhaka and Chittagong are not just exposed — they are under-defended. To understand why their defences fall short, we must examine the physical and social realities shaping both cities.
Geography they cannot escape
Bangladesh’s geography is both a blessing and a curse. Its fertile delta supports millions, but it also places its cities directly in the path of climate extremes.
Dhaka: A megacity on a floodplain
Dhaka sits atop the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna floodplain, surrounded by rivers that swell during monsoon season. The city is naturally prone to riverine flooding, waterlogging, drainage congestion, and heat stress. Climate change magnifies these risks, making rainfall more erratic and extreme precipitation more frequent. Even moderate rainfall can paralyze the city.
Chittagong: A coastal city facing the Bay of Bengal
Chittagong’s position as Bangladesh’s primary port city exposes it to cyclones, storm surges, coastal flooding, salinity intrusion, and landslides in its hilly settlements. The Bay of Bengal is one of the world’s most cyclone-prone regions, and rising sea levels threaten both residential neighbourhoods and critical port infrastructure.
Geography is destiny — but in Bangladesh, destiny is being reshaped by climate change faster than infrastructure can adapt.
Population pressures they cannot slow
Dhaka is one of the densest cities on Earth, with some wards exceeding 50,000 people per square kilometre. Chittagong, though less dense, is still heavily crowded. High density amplifies climate risk: evacuation becomes difficult, drainage systems are overwhelmed, informal settlements expand into hazard-prone zones, and infrastructure is chronically overloaded.
Dhaka’s population exploded from roughly one million in 1970 to over twenty million today. No city — regardless of wealth — has successfully adapted to climate risks while growing at this pace.
Infrastructure gaps they cannot close overnight
Bangladesh has made impressive strides in rural disaster management — cyclone shelters, early warning systems, and community preparedness. But urban adaptation has lagged behind.
Dhaka’s drainage crisis
Dhaka’s drainage system is overwhelmed every monsoon. Encroachment on canals and wetlands, clogged stormwater drains, insufficient pumping capacity, and uncoordinated urban expansion have created a systemic failure that magnifies every climate shock.
Chittagong’s port vulnerability
Chittagong’s port is the country’s economic lifeline. Cyclones can disrupt shipping, damage port facilities, flood industrial zones, and cause billions in economic losses. Infrastructure upgrades are underway, but the scale of risk is immense.
Governance structures they inherited
Dhaka’s governance is famously fragmented. Multiple agencies — city corporations, RAJUK, WASA, BWDB, DTCA, and various ministries — share overlapping responsibilities. This fragmentation leads to slow decision-making, weak enforcement of zoning laws, poor coordination during emergencies, and infrastructure projects that contradict one another. Chittagong faces similar challenges, though less severe.
Climate resilience requires unified governance; these cities have the opposite.
Economic constraints they must work within
Bangladesh’s urban governments operate within tight fiscal boundaries while juggling pressing development priorities — housing, transportation, education, healthcare, and industrial growth. These demands compete for limited public resources, leaving little room for large-scale climate adaptation.
Climate-resilient infrastructure is expensive. Major drainage overhauls, river restoration, coastal defences, elevated port facilities, and heat-resilient urban design require billions of dollars — far beyond municipal budgets. Domestic financing alone cannot meet the scale of investment required to protect these cities from intensifying climate threats.
This is where structural injustice becomes starkly visible: Bangladesh is among the world’s lowest per-capita emitters, yet it must spend disproportionately on adaptation simply because of where its people live and how global emissions have reshaped their environment.
Why Dhaka and Chittagong rank so low
The rankings reflect a convergence of forces: geography they cannot escape, climate change they did not cause, population pressures they cannot slow, infrastructure gaps they cannot close overnight, governance structures they inherited, and economic constraints they must work within. These cities are not failing — they are fighting a battle against forces larger than themselves.
What can be done? Realistic pathways forward
Despite these constraints, meaningful action is possible. The challenge is to distinguish realistic strategies from idealistic ones. The multi-faceted nature of resilience is being realized across the world. Boston Consulting Group, recently published an assessment “Redesigning Climate Resilience for a World of Financial Tipping Points”, which highlights how the fault-lines across climate, financial, and societal risk can be traced in high-income countries (like the US). Some learnings can be applied to Bangladesh:
Short-term priorities (0–5 Years)
Immediate interventions must reduce harm quickly and buy time. Restoring wetlands and canals is the most urgent priority. Dhaka’s natural drainage system has been compromised by decades of encroachment and waste accumulation. Enforcing existing laws and rehabilitating key canals can dramatically improve monsoon resilience.
Targeted drainage upgrades in the most flood‑prone wards — desilting drains, widening channels, installing pumps — can reduce waterlogging and prevent the city from grinding to a halt every monsoon season. These improvements are not glamorous, but they are lifesaving.
Climate‑resilient upgrading of informal settlements is essential. Raised walkways, improved drainage, sturdier roofing, and community‑managed shelters can save lives without mass displacement. Small investments here often produce outsized benefits because they protect the most exposed populations.
Heat action plans — cooling centres, public alerts, shaded corridors, reflective roofs — can reduce heat‑related mortality, especially among outdoor laborers. Cities like Ahmedabad in India have shown that even low‑cost heat strategies can dramatically reduce deaths.
Finally, small, empowered resilience taskforces within municipal corporations can coordinate projects across agencies, reducing fragmentation and improving emergency response – focusing on assessments across climate, financial, and societal resilience (not just physical climate risk). Even modest improvements in coordination can accelerate adaptation.
Long-term strategy (5–25 Years)
Long‑term resilience requires structural change. Bangladesh must rebalance its urban system by strengthening secondary cities — Khulna, Rajshahi, Sylhet — to reduce pressure on Dhaka and Chittagong. This is not merely decentralization; it is climate adaptation through spatial planning.
Major drainage and river restoration projects, including retention basins and nature‑based solutions such as mangrove belts, can create ecological buffers that reduce flood peaks and storm impacts. These projects take decades, but they reshape risk at the metropolitan scale.
Chittagong requires dedicated coastal and port resilience measures — elevated infrastructure, surge barriers, diversified logistics — to protect national economic stability. A climate-resilient port is not optional; it is foundational to Bangladesh’s future.
Climate‑integrated urban planning must become standard. Master plans should legally protect floodplains, wetlands, and high-risk hillsides, ensuring development does not deepen vulnerability. Stronger enforcement of building codes and zoning laws is essential.
Businesses must also look to contribute, incentivized by the government. Instruments such as public-private risk pools or deployment of resilient-incentivized loans may spur needed investment that will help support resilience for these cities beyond just climate.
Finally, Bangladesh must leverage international climate finance. Accessing global adaptation funds is not charity — it is climate justice. High‑emitting nations owe a moral debt to countries like Bangladesh, which suffer disproportionately from a crisis they did not create.
Conclusion: A call for justice and pragmatism
Dhaka and Chittagong’s low resilience rankings are not indictments of their people or their governments. They are reflections of structural injustice: cities punished for emissions they did not cause, struggling against climate forces they did not unleash.
Yet these cities are not helpless. They have agency — constrained, but real. With targeted short-term interventions and ambitious long-term planning, they can reduce suffering, strengthen resilience, and reshape their future.
Climate resilience in Dhaka and Chittagong is not merely a national priority — it is a global responsibility. These cities are on the frontlines of a crisis created elsewhere. Their struggle is a reminder that climate justice is not an abstract principle but a lived reality for millions.
Bangladesh’s cities are under siege. Yet with vision, coordination, and global support, they can endure — and even thrive — in the climate-challenged decades ahead.
Hassan Siddiqui
Associate Director in Boston Consulting Group’s Climate & Sustainability practice area. He primarily focuses on the intersection of sustainability and operations. He has an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and a BSE in chemical and biomolecular engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a co-author (with Habib Siddiqui) of the book - Operational Excellence in the Process Industry: A Practitioner’s Guide to Lean Six Sigma (Taylor & Francis/Routledge).
Habib Siddiqui
Habib Siddiqui, with doctoral research works in California in chemical and nuclear engineering, is an internationally recognized expert on operational excellence. He has successfully deployed the change initiative for four major multi-national corporations, including the BASF where he is currently employed. He has four decades of experience in peaceful activism, especially in defense of the rights of displaced people. He has authored 20 books and more than 1,000 opinion pieces on religion, history, culture and civilization of Muslim people; international politics, political Islam, political leadership, strategic and security issues; terrorism and democracy in the Muslim world. E-mail: saeva@aol.com
