Executive Summary We provide a first assessment on how 15 local communities in the Global South are building resilience in the face of COVID-19. We found that communities used many different coping strategies, spanning multiple social domains of resilience, when responding to a crisis. Social domains of resilience not only imply communities having access to capital, but also that people …

Impacts of climate change severely affect the water security of the communities in the south-west coastal region of Bangladesh. An action research conducted in two selected villages of Khulna in 2018 shed light on specific local water insecurities due to climatic and non-climatic factors, associated consequences on local communities and limitations of current coping strategies. The study also illustrated some …

Nature-based solutions (NbS) are receiving international attention for helping us to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change, whilst protecting biodiversity and supporting sustainable development. As such, NbS provide a way to enable economic development without ecosystem loss or damage. Bangladesh has a long history of implementing NbS but has faced challenges due to lack of robust design, …

Impacts of climate change severely affect the livelihood security of the communities in the south-west coastal region of Bangladesh. An action research conducted in two selected villages of Khulna in 2018 shed light on specific local vulnerabilities to livelihood, its consequences on local communities and limitations of current coping strategies in the view of a changing climate. This policy brief …

The 2015 Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) introduces a ‘transparency framework’, to promote accountability in the implementation of the Agreement. A set of “modalities, procedures and guidelines”, agreed upon in 2018, sketch how to put the transparency framework into practical operation. These “modalities, procedures and guidelines” include a voluntary provision to report information …

There is today a wide scientific consensus on the existence of global warming, driven by the increased Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions (due to historic human activities) and concentration in the atmosphere. The latest IPCC 1.5°C Special report, released a couple of weeks ago in October 2018, made a clear statement that the world need to cut carbons emission as fast …

For over a decade, researchers and policymakers have considered enhancing “adaptive capacity” to be a linchpin of successful adaptation to climate change. In 2015, at the 21st Conference of Parties in Paris, the international community formally asserted the importance of increasing the ability of individuals and groups to adapt to long-term changes in the climate, and committed to doing so …

Bangladesh has been experiencing a rapid growth in urban population during last four decades. However, this growth follows an imbalanced spatial distribution, mostly directed towards Dhaka city. As of 2011, almost 44% of the country’s urban population lived in Dhaka resulting in excessive pressure on its housing, transportation, infrastructure, and basic services (GED, 2015). This pressure is accumulating every year …

Education and research are explicitly recognized in a number of the SDGs and universities have a direct role in addressing these. However, the contribution of universities to the SDGs is much broader, as they can support the implementation of every one of the SDGs as well as the implementation of the SDG framework itself. Some of these main areas of …

The world community already lives in a climate changed world. However, the need to adapt to its increasing impact is extremely urgent for the particularly vulnerable countries, such as the least developed countries (LDCs), small island developing states (SIDS) and Africa. Of all these countries, Bangladesh stands unique in terms of climate impacts on a huge population of 160 million …