Climate change and drowning risk in Bangladesh and Tanzania and the implications for RNLI programmes

This report provides findings from primarily desk-based investigation by the consultancy project team into the impact of climate change on drowning risks at the national scale and specifically in relation to current and potential target populations for RNLI intervention. We take a near to mid-term view on this, essentially comparing the present situation to how risks may alter within the period to mid-century, but especially within the next two decades to 2040 (though recognising that such a temporal framing can only be illustrative, rather than precise). Our focus is particularly on two RNLI countries of operation, Bangladesh and Tanzania. This report combines qualitative and quantitative information, triangulating across different sources of data, including in-country expert discussions, to provide a profile of current drowning incidence, trends, risk factors and the intervention environment in the study countries, and then examine the projected implications of climate change and the interaction with other risk dynamics. In the final section we qualitatively assess the significance of these changes for drowning risk in these countries in the near-term future, and the implications of the study for RNLI programming...