Haseeb Md. Irfanullah

Two concepts related to climate change – Locally-Led Adaptation (LLA) and Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) – have gained significant momentum over the last couple of years.

The 2022 JRP has five strategic objectives to support the affected Bangladeshi and Rohingya populations.

In the last couple of months, we have been listening to discussions on how to build on the outcomes of the COP26—the 26th Conference of the Parties for climate change held in Glasgow, UK last year.

As we enter the third year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the societal challenges we were fighting in the pre-Covid times all got worse over the past two years—be it extreme poverty, food and water crises, biodiversity loss, ecological degradation, or climatic change and associated disasters. But, can nature still be a part of tackling these challenges?

If we want to address our development and societal challenges with the help of nature, we have three options. While nature-based solutions (NbS) have been discussed in this column extensively, let’s talk about two other options: nature-driven solutions and nature-inspired solutions.

The Government of Bangladesh has recently drafted the Mujib Climate Prosperity Plan Decade 2030.

On November 13, 2021, the two-week 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, ended in Scotland with the participating nations agreeing upon the Glasgow Climate Pact.

When I talk about Bangladesh’s climate change response, I get excited by the thought of three milestones.

Over the last four years, the Rohingya refugee crisis has changed the Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf Peninsula on many levels.

Before answering the question in the title, let’s look into Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and Blue Economy.

If we track the history of floating agriculture in Bangladesh, we may find six major phases. It is difficult to pinpoint when floating cultivation began in Bangladesh—the current reckoning goes up to 400 years ago.

Over the last 50 years, Bangladesh’s journey towards community development has essentially been a result of government, donors, and NGOs coming together to work for the vulnerable people.

In the second half of 2017, the government did something unprecedented in response to an unprecedented situation—it sheltered about 750,000 Rohingyas fleeing from a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” by the Myanmar army.

The United Nations declared 2021-2030 as the “Decade on Ecosystem Restoration”. Such declarations bring us both good news and bad. First,

Being born and brought up in Lalbag of Old Dhaka, I often find myself in the middle of a large, rapidly changing archaeological site by the Buriganga River.

When we talk about nature-based solutions (NbS)—that is protecting, managing, restoring or creating ecosystems for the benefit of the people and biodiversity—we almost always think of wilderness or rural areas.

Farmers of the south-central districts of Bangladesh, namely Barishal, Gopalganj, Madaripur, and Pirojpur, have been practicing floating agriculture for decades, if not centuries.

The third batch of Rohingya refugees entered Bhashan Char on January 29 and January 30, 2021. Out of Cox’s Bazar’s 867,000 refugees, about 6,700 have now been voluntarily relocated since December 2020 to this island on the Bay of Bengal.

In 2020, Nature-based Solutions, or NbS, has emerged as a much-talked-about environmental concept in Bangladesh.

Twenty-Four years ago, when the prime ministers of Bangladesh and India signed the Ganges Water Sharing Treaty on December 12, 1996, it was quite a different world to mark such a milestone.