Bridging the Gap: Aligning Bangladesh’s Climate Change Adaptation Law with the International Legal Framework

Bangladesh is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world. Floods, cyclones, salinity, and rising sea levels already put lives, livelihoods, and whole ecosystems at risk. The country has responded with a long list of adaptation tools such as the National Adaptation Programme of Action, the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan, the Delta Plan 2100, and the National Adaptation Plan 2023–2050, and it has set up special institutions and even pays for some adaptation from its own budget. This article argues that this record, impressive as it looks, hides a real weakness. Bangladesh is rich in policy but poor in law. It has taken in the international adaptation framework at the level of strategy, ambition, and institutions, but not at the level of binding and enforceable legal duty. Using a doctrinal and comparative method, the article sets the international framework (the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement) against Bangladesh’s constitution, statutes, and policies and shows that this ‘policy-without-law’ character is the real adaptation gap. The gap is structural; it is not just a problem of weak implementation. Looking at the Maldives, Vietnam, and Kenya, the article shows that the gap can be closed. The clearest way to close it is to pass a dedicated climate change adaptation Act that turns the country’s policy ambition into lasting legal duty, backed by better coordination between institutions, easier access to international finance, and real participation by affected communities