(This article was originally published here)
Awareness of the climate change problem is now at an all time high all over the world. In Bangladesh, the level of awareness of climate change is relatively higher than in many other countries. This awareness now needs to be translated into knowledge and actions on the solutions of the problem. The government, as well as different non-governmental actors, in Bangladesh are all engaged in tackling different aspects of the climate change problem from their respective positions. Thus, the different sectoral ministries such as agriculture, water, health, energy, etc, are all now implementing actions to tackle climate change. Similarly, the major ministries such as Planning and Finance are also now beginning to mainstream climate change planning and finance.
At the same time, the research community is very active and has formed a collective initiative called Gobeshona (Bangla for “research”) and have a web portal – www.gobeshona.net – as well as a monthly seminar series and annual conference every January.
The NGOs have also been very active in developing a consortium of fifteen major NGOs around a common program called Action Research on Climate Adaptation in Bangladesh (www.arcab.net ) and will be holding the 10th International Conference on Community Based Adaptation (CBA10) in Bangladesh early next year.
Even the private sector has become involved in tackling aspects of the climate change problem related to insurance and salt and drought-tolerant seeds distribution. The media, both electronic as well a print, in English as well as Bangla, is also very good at covering climate change issues in Bangladesh with the Bangladesh Television program called “Amrai Pari” ( we can do it ourselves) prepared by BBC Media Action as a flagship program seen by many millions of people. It is therefore time for the media in Bangladesh to up their game in terms of not just covering the climate change problem, but also the myriad solutions being developed by different actors around Bangladesh.
It is therefore, with great pride that the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) along with the Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB), the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS), and the International Institute for Environment and development (IIED) based in the United Kingdom are entering into an agreement with the Dhaka Tribune to help them publish a fortnightly climate change page as well as occasional features in their weekend magazine. These feature length articles and information will be published each fortnight and talk about various themes and sectors affected by climate change including community-based-adaptation, adaptation technology, renewable energy, health, and many others. In addition to being published in the daily newspaper, the articles will also remain in their website where, over time, they should become a valuable repository of articles of interest to people.
Finally, while we will be curating the page on behalf of Dhaka Tribune we do not wish to monopolise the articles that we provide to them, so we welcome submissions of proposals for articles to us, which we would be happy to provide guidance on how to turn into publishable articles.
We hope readers of Dhaka Tribune and visitors to their website will find these articles on the solutions to climate change useful as well as interesting.
Written by: Saleemul Huq is Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London and Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University, Bangladesh.
