The concept of water poverty integrates water stress, access to safe water and sanitation, socioeconomic capacity, water uses and environmental aspects. This study presents a new concept to demonstrate gender-differentiated impacts of water poverty for different livelihood groups in a peri-urban setting. The objective is to identify how gender and livelihood groups are affected by dynamic water poverty. A few peri-urban areas around Dhaka city were selected as the study area, and male and female industrial workers, small-scale male and female farmers, and economically inactive women were the target groups. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey of 220 respondents and using a number of participatory appraisal tools, such as focus group discussions, and semi-structured and key-informant interviews. Water poverty was assessed by its five components: resource, access, capacity, use and environment. Peri-urban water poverty is found not only to be limited to scarcity, or physical availability, of water resources, but also to encompass political, social, economic and institutional dimensions. The study found that inadequate availability and quality of water, restricted access and use, poor socioeconomic capacity and fragile environment affected every livelihood group, but these factors eventually led to extreme impoverishment for adolescent girls, and physically challenged and elderly women. Suggestions are provided as to how gender issues of water can be balanced at different levels to make water management decisions gender-sensitive.

This study has assessed livelihood diversification occurred in Kovalam, which is a coastal village in Tamil Nadu state in India. Livelihood diversification is a strategy which enables people to surmount the vulnerability of conventional income-generating activities by diversifying and expanding the number of activities for an improvement in their standard of living. Participatory Rural Appraisal tools, which are focus group discussion, key-informant interview and semi-structured questionnaires, have been used to collect primary data. The result suggested that fishing and fishing allied activities are the major livelihood in Kovalam village, whereas nowadays, small business, services, day laborer, vendors and other different activities are also practiced as livelihood options on a smaller scale. The emerging issue of freshwater insecurity interlinks with the gender division of labor corresponding to livelihood strategies. Gender can be integrated in a better way to ensure sustainable livelihood which will safeguard the wellbeing of coastal communities.

In recent decades, with the rapid growth of urbanization, the amount of carbon emission in urban areas has been globally accelerated. In this study, the carbon storage capacity of different small administrative regions (wards) of Khulna city has been estimated based on four major sinks types- trees, vegetations, soils, and water bodies. To estimate carbon storage capacity, the total coverage area of each of the sink’s types has been estimated by Sentinel-II satellite image data of 2019 through supervised image classification of remote sensing techniques. A comparison of more carbon-absorbing capacities between the wards has been assessed through GIS techniques as well. Results show that the north-west part of Khulna city has some extent of carbon sinks. However, the lower portion in the southern part is congested with built-up areas and has a huge lacking of carbon sinks. The obtained amount of carbon about 9306992 kg, 7733698 kg, 7328298 kg, and 6030692 kg have been absorbed through respective trees, vegetations, soils, and water bodies which is about 31%, 25%, 24%, and 20% of total absorption, respectively. The result shows that carbon absorption capacity is very high in ward no. 3 whereas ward no. 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 14, 16, and 31 are high carbon-absorbing wards. Ward no 8, 13, 15, 17, 18 and 24 are moderate, ward no 5, 10, 12, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 and 30 are lower and ward no 7, 11, 19, 20 and 23 are very lower carbon-absorbing wards of Khulna city. The findings of this study opt to provide valuable insights amongst significant stakeholders, i.e., local people, urban planners, policy-makers, and non-government organizations regarding the emission and absorption of carbon.