ARCAB – International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD)

Capacity Building & Finance Moving in Bangladesh

ICCCAD — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 12:00:23 +0000

A three day residential workshop on “Strengthening Partnership for Capacity Building and Finance of Local Level Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh” was conducted by ICCCAD and Action Research for Community Adaptation in Bangladesh (ARCAB) in Partnership with UNDP’s Poverty Environment Climate Mainstreaming (PECM) project of General Economic Divisions (GED), Government of Bangladesh. Lasting from the 14th to the 16th February, 2014.

An opening seminar was held in Spectra Convention Center in Gulshan, Dhaka on the 13th of February. Special guests at the seminar were Professor M. Omar Rahman vice chancellor of Independent University, Bangladesh and Dr. Aminul Islam, Assistant Country Director, CCED, UNDP. The event was inaugurated by the chief guest Dr. Shamsul Alam, Member, GED, Planning Commission and welcome speech was given by Dr. Saleemul Huq, Director of ICCCAD. In a second session 5 policy briefs were presented along with presentations from PECM and GED, by A K M Mamunur Rashid, National Project Manager, PECM, and Mohammad Rafiqul Islam, Joint Chief, GED. Dr. Mesbah ul Alam, Secretary, Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief, joined the closing session of the seminar as a Special Guest. On the same day participants travelled to the venue for the workshop BRAC Centre for Development and Management (CDM), Savar.

The first day of the workshop was initiated by Dr. Saleemul Huq. A series of presentations started with Kairos dela Cruz from the Institute of Climate and Sustainable Cities (iCSC) of the Philippines. The presentation session was continued by participants from different INGOs like Islamic Relief, Save the Children, Care Bangladesh, Practical Action Bangladesh, ActionAid Bangladesh and Transparency International Bangladesh. There were local NGOs like BEDS and Progoti, also national groups like BCAS and CPRD, who took part. Participants from CDMP, UNDP, GIZ, ARCAB, BRAC University, Murdoch University, Jagannath University were also present. Several Planning Commission officers from the GED also took part in the workshop.

The second day of the workshop primarily involved group work. Groups were assigned based on issues of Pilot Projects, Gender Youth and Children, Capacity Building, and Finance. Each of these four groups had focus discussion on identifying potential problems, ways to solve them and possible stakeholders that are to take part in it. In a later session the leads of each group shared their outcomes through presentations.

On the closing day, participants were given the floor to share their views and further discuss their action notes both individually and as part of an organization. After a closing speech and promise to make full effort to put plan in action the workshop came to an end.

By: Nawmi Mannan, Research Officer, ICCCAD March Newsletter 2014

At the VSOB National Sharing Workshop

ICCCAD — Sat, 30 Nov 2013 17:59:10 +0000

“Some actors in this development world focus on building resilience of children, some actors focus on building resilience of youths, we need to build a bridge between these two and we get Climate Resilient Citizens for this world.”

At Action Research for Community Adaptation in Bangladesh (ARCAB) we believe that building resilience to climate change is not a one-dimensional task, neither can this be achieved by focusing on only one generation. To achieve true resilience we will have to focus on building Climate Resilient Citizens. We need to start building them from the very early age. Our actions should continue even when they grow up and become youth, as this is the age when majority of them start getting involved in politics, economy and social development. This is the common platform where Voluntary Services Overseas Bangladesh (VSOB) and ARCAB stand together, and through their strong partnership they are thriving to reach the common goal of building Climate Resilient Citizens through voluntary involvement of the youth.

ARCAB in partnership with VSOB, on 26^th of September 2013, organized a National Level Sharing Workshop and the theme of this workshop was “Youth Leading Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change”. Participants attended the workshop from several INGOs & youth groups. I was lucky to be one of the organizers of this workshop and be a part of this along with my other ARCAB and ICCCAD colleagues and volunteers.

An interesting part of this workshop was VSO’s local partner organizations and their volunteers presenting the outcomes and lessons learned from their pilot projects; at local level they have taken on innovative approaches to adapt to climate change, i.e. rainwater harvesting, container gardening, arsenic water filters. The workshop participants appreciated all these pilot projects.

The workshop continued with a mind-mapping session, the participants were divided in 4 groups to brainstorm on specific topics; people from different area of worked together to generate specific recommendations to involve the youth in the development sector.

During the presentations of the outcomes from the mind-mapping sessions it was really interesting to see so many scope of involvement for the youth in all the selected issues, and also how youth in this country can really become the change makers. Syed Md. Iqbal Ali, Programme Director of ARCAB in his concluding remarks discussed the pivotal role the youth can play to achieve transformed resilience; he also emphasized the importance to address the development deficit. Imrul H Khan, Head of Programmes in VSOB, discussed the way forward; he mentioned that VSOB, together with ARCAB, will continue to work with the youth and focus on building Climate Resilient Citizens.

Writtten by: Reaj Morshed, Coordinator: Climate Finance and Governance Programme, ARCAB Programme, ICCCAD November Newsletter 2013

The ARCAB Program

ICCCAD — Sun, 30 Jun 2013 15:57:54 +0000

While the work of ICCCAD spans many countries and engages people from the local to the international levels, our program on Action Research for Community Adaptation in Bangladesh (ARCAB) has a very specific focus on helping the most vulnerable communities adapt to climate change. Our research under ARCAB aims to generate and disseminate new knowledge on best practices for community-based adaptation (CBA). There is no better place than Bangladesh to harness the collective knowledge of communities, civil society, academics, and others, whose daily experiences with an unpredictable climate offer many important lessons. Through partnerships with our international NGO Action Partners and a wide range of Research Partners, ARCAB is fostering a long-term vision of ongoing action research that will inform adaptation solutions for vulnerable communities for decades to come.

In recent months, the ARCAB team has been working on a number of initiatives. The seventh international conference on community-based adaptation (CBA7), held in Dhaka from April 22-25 this year, provided a great opportunity to bring together many of the experts working on our ARCAB research themes. International and national researchers from our themes on livelihoods, cost-benefit analysis, adaptive agriculture, urban adaptation, and mainstreaming met on the margins of the conference to discuss their activities. The urban research team led by David Dodman at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) has recently completed its field study and data collection activities and is now working on data analysis. Our team focused on a cost-benefit analysis of CBA, led by Rodney Lunduka at IIED, is in the process of finalizing survey tools and will soon conduct field visits to examine the economic impacts of a cluster village and climate-resilient handloom factory project. An emerging research theme on climate insurance, led by Iqbal Ali, also made good progress through a number of productive discussions and a scoping visit.

We were also very excited to host international climate expert Terry Cannon in Dhaka for a two-day ARCAB Research Methods Workshop. The workshop was attended by representatives from several of our Action Partners. It covered core aspects of good research, including how to frame research questions and hypotheses, how to apply critical thinking methods to drive high-quality research, and the importance of NGOs turning more attention to pursuing rigorous research and evaluating the impact of their projects. In addition, ARCAB continues to support Action Partners in developing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) frameworks for CBA activities. Following the publication earlier this year of the ARCAB report,Moving Towards Transformed Resilience, ARCAB M&E expert Lucy Faulkner has presented our framework at conferences in Nepal and Germany, as well a webinar presented by SEA Change in partnership with CARE.

In the field, our dedicated team lead by Sarder Shafiqul Alam continues to work in numerous upazilas to conduct community-based vulnerability and risk assessments, create action plans, and share the outcomes with local government officials. Furthermore, our work on local climate finance for adaptation is continuing with our Catalytic Project, which aims to build partnerships and engage in advocacy with the government and other key decision-makers. Three partners have now joined our Working Group on this topic: ActionAid Bangladesh, Islamic Relief Bangladesh, and Plan Bangladesh. We continue to pursue partnerships with organizations that share our goals of improving local governance of climate change adaptation planning and increasing local access to climate funds. We are also pleased to announce that Reaj Morshed has recently joined ARCAB as our Coordinator for Financing Local Adaptation.