Living standards : reexamining the standard of living of the people of the Southwest coastal areas of Bangladesh : evidences from the Sustainable Development Goal 9

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are considered a blueprint to achieve a better, peaceful, and sustainable future for the world. Sustainable development cannot be achieved without ensuring an improved standard of living (SL) for individuals. Bangladesh has achieved significant progress in poverty alleviation, food security, primary school enrolment, gender parity in primary and secondary level education, lowering the infant and under-five mortality rate and maternal mortality ratio, improving immunization coverage, and reducing the incidence of communicable diseases in the recent past decades. Such achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) confirms the strong commitment of the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) towards the implementation of 17 goals for the sustainable development. According to the SDG Index (2018), between 2015 and 2018, globally, Bangladesh ranks 111 out of 156 countries for achieving targets of SDGs. The SDG 9 – industry, innovation, and infrastructure – is one of the goals, in which extremely little progress has been made since 2015 when the country adopted SDG. The achievement of SDG 9 in the coastal areas, constituting one-third of the country’s total land mass of Bangladesh, is potentially challenging. The coastal areas are geographically vulnerable because there are poor infrastructural facilities (such as fragile roadway and transportation system, and an absence of industry) and economic resource constraints. Between 2007 and 2019, the inhabitants of the coastline have experienced long-term effects of extreme weather events such as floods, cyclones (Foni, Royanu, Mora, Mohasen, Aila, and Sidr), storms, salinity intrusion, and heatwaves, which have severely impacted their lives and livelihoods. Consequently, for the inhabitants of coastal areas, the standard of living as social progress and accessing basic needs have been uncertain and unstable over the years. Taking these aspects into account, this paper surveys literature addressing the standard of living in coastal areas of Bangladesh. The current study also documents the interrelation between SDG 9 and the SL, considering the initiatives taken by the Government of Bangladesh in the coastal region of the country.