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Reports / Scoping Studies

Climate-resilient agriculture in Bangladesh: A value chain analysis of cotton

February 2019. Md. Nadiruzzaman, Mahjabeen Rahman, Uma Pal, Md. Fahad Hossain, Md. Farid Uddin, Md. Kamrul Islam

Climate change is an immediate concern in Bangladesh. The country’s geophysical characteristics expose it to extreme events, and its economy relies on agriculture, which is highly climate sensitive. Bangladesh continues to reduce poverty but still has a long way to go, as one out of every four Bangladeshi remains poor as of 2016 (World Bank, 2017). These factors imply that the smallest shocks or stresses can push the already socio-economically marginalised sections of the population further into poverty and deprivation. Meanwhile, rainfall patterns are already shifting, and the intensity of rainfall is projected to increase in the next few decades. Bangladesh has also been exhibiting increasing trends in annual mean temperatures. The situation will continue to worsen, indicating an urgent need to build the resilience of people and their livelihoods to climate change.


Assessment of Socio-economic Impacts of CBET in Bangladesh

October 2018. Saleemul Huq, Shababa Haque, Bodrud-doza Zion, Naznin Nasir, Mahid Yusuf, Saqib Huq, Rohit Magotra and Asha Kaushik

Over the past decade, Bangladesh has made an immense amount of progress when it comes to economic growth and development. The country is on course for graduating from its least developed country (LDC) status and becoming a middle income country in the near future. It has already met the three necessary criteria for this and can expect to make this remarkable change by 2024. While there is still time before all the changes that will be brought through this implementation, the country needs to prepare its economy for this graduation and boost its development further.


Identifying High Priority Clean Energy Investment Opportunities for Bangladesh

18 February 2018, Kenji Shiraishi, Rebekah Shirley, Daniel M. Kammen, Saleemul Huq, and
Feisal Rahman

Bangladesh has committed to provide electricity for all by 2021, to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 5% from power and other sectors by 2030, and to develop 100% domestic renewable energy as rapidly as possible. This study is the first of its kind to examine potential areas for solar and wind energy projects in Bangladesh that can help to meet those goals. To do this, we excluded all areas likely to be environmentally or socially unacceptable for solar or wind projects (low-lying areas, steep slopes, dense settlements, protected areas and their buffer zones, etc.), and then estimated the levelized cost of electricity for each 5km “project opportunity area”. We found that there is far more utility-scale solar PV potential than previously estimated, at costs lower than coal power, and conversion of cropland
can likely be avoided.


Community-based adaptation (CBA): adding conceptual clarity to the approach, and establishing its principles and challenges

October 2017. Patrick Kirkby, Casey Williams & Saleemul Huq

Community-based adaptation (CBA) is an approach to strengthening the adaptive capacity of local communities vulnerable to climate change. The CBA approach increasingly features in discussions among policy makers, planners, advocates, and researchers, and has been endorsed and adopted by numerous governmental and non-governmental organizations. However, to date the CBA approach has lacked conceptual clarity, and the term is interpreted and deployed in various and often contradictory ways. This paper seeks to address this deficit by explaining the rationale put forth for CBA by its proponents, outlining its guiding principles, and theorizing some of its key challenges, which often point to opportunities for the approach to evolve.


Non-economic losses from climate change: opportunities for policy-oriented research .September 2017. Olivia Maria Serdeczny , Steffen Bauer & Saleemul Huq

The concept of non-economic losses (NELs) has recently emerged in the context of negotiations on loss and damage under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). NELs are losses of values that are not commonly traded in markets but bear high relevance for those affected. Examples include loss of life, biodiversity and cultural heritage. The ongoing institutionalization of approaches to loss and damage under the UNFCCC offers great opportunities to provide a sound information base for policy- and decision-making on NELs. Available expertise to meet the emerging knowledge needs includes insights into relevant indicators, and adequate means of integrating NELs into decision-making processes that seek to reduce losses ex-ante. Further research is needed to identify or develop appropriate responses to NELs ex-post. Here, historical analogues of loss and practices of remembrance and recognition can provide valuable insights. Opportunities for engagement exist at the UNFCCC’s science-policy interface. These include participation and active engagement at open meetings under the UNFCCC to advance exchange on applied research that is framed around policy-relevant questions on NELs as well as interaction with the expert group on NELs that was set up under the designated policy body to work on loss and damage under the UNFCCC, i.e. the Warsaw International Mechanism.


Adaptation Technology in Bangladesh Gobeshona Sub-group on Adaptation Technology

. August 2017. Alina Schulenburg, Md. Kamruzzaman, Md. Bodrud-Doza Makame Mahmud, Rigan Ali Khan, Muhammed Atikul Haque, Naimul Islam, Md. Badrul Alam Talukder, Priodarshine Auvi, Md. Feisal Rahman


Dhaka Photovoice Program May 2017 Report

May 2017. Michael Chew & Emily Crawford

This first round of the Dhaka Photovoice Program has been very successful over May 2017 with a
total of seven photovoice workshops run with four different local partner organisations, and a
range of photo-stories and associated visual documents created.


Non-Economic Loss and Damage Caused by Climatic Stressors in Selected Coastal Districts of Bangladesh. October 2014. Stephanie Andrei, Golam Rabbani and Hafij Islam Khan.

This report aims to respond to this gap in knowledge by presenting findings from the community level in South-West Bangladesh. The main goal of this research study was to begin deconstructing what non-economic losses and damages might entail and evaluate qualitative methods for its research. The research was conducted in partnership with the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) and the Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies (BCAS) and made possible by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). This report feeds into ADB’s projects to support the implementation of the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy Action Plan (BCCSAP) and in particular, items related to loss and damage.


Taking Effective Community-based Adaptation to Scale: An assessment of the GEF Small Grants Programme Community-Based Adaptation Project in Namibia, June 2013, ICCCAD.

This report is an exploratory study on scaling up and scaling out the GEF SGP community-based adaptation (CBA) project, implemented by UNDP. Using Namibia in sub-Saharan Africa as a case study, this report identifies which processes used and results obtained are effective.


Scoping Report – Current Status of IBI in Bangladesh, 2013, Ahmed, T, WorldFish.

With current and anticipated increases in magnitude of extreme weather events and a declining consistency in weather patterns, particularly challenging for agriculture, there has been a growing interest in weather index-based insurance (IBI) schemes in Bangladesh. A number of weather index-based insurance products have already been tested and applied across Asia and Africa, with varying degrees of success, as a mechanism to improve livelihood security by enabling vulnerable populations to transfer risk associated with climate change, extreme weather events and other hazards. In the process, these efforts have generated important new knowledge on how these schemes can be designed and implemented for optimal results. However, the practice of index-based insurance is still limited in Bangladesh, and the experience and knowledge generated by the different stakeholders involved needs to be better communicated.