DECCMA and HI-AWARE jointly convene stakeholder workshop with WARPO to disseminate Bangladesh research findings

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by Saiful Alam

A joint stakeholder workshop was arranged by DECCMA and HI-AWARE to present Bangladesh research findings. The meeting took place at the Water Resources Planning Organisation (WARPO) in Dhaka on 17th January 2018. Attendees included the Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Forest and the Environment, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Planning, Housing Authority, Local Government Division, and UNDP.

DECCMA Bangladesh Principal Investigator, Professor Munsur Rahman, and Co-Principal Investigator, Professor Mashfiqus Salehin, made a joint keynote presentation on ‘Adaptation and Migration in GBM Delta, Bangladesh’. HI-AWARE Bangladesh Principal Investigator, Md. Abu Syed, made a keynote presentation on ‘Climate resilience and adaptation in Teesta sub-Basin of Brahmaputra Basin’.

Stakeholders provided inputs to highlight their particular areas of interest in DECCMA findings. Among the key themes were an understanding of the reasons for migration, quantifying negative and positive impacts, and projections for the future-to add to those already outlined in the Delta Plan 2100. There was also interest in modelling the impact of climate change on the economy, as is being undertaken within DECCMA, led by the Bc3 Basque Centre for Climate Change, and supporting the use of models at local (upazila) level.

Call for proposals: 6th International Climate Change and Population Conference on Africa in Accra, Ghana

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DECCMA Ghana lead institution, the Regional Institute for Population Studies at the University of Ghana, will host the 6th International Climate Change and Population Conference on Africa. The conference will take place in Accra from 23-25th July 2018 with the theme “The future we do not want”. Abstracts will be accepted in three areas namely: (i) Policy and Practice, (ii) Development & Intervention Projects, and (iii) Basic and Applied Sciences, across relevant disciplines in the Humanities, Population Sciences, Health Sciences, Basic & Applied Sciences, and the Engineering & GeoSpatial Sciences, and should be submitted by 18th May.

Sub-themes that will be addressed during the conference include:

  1. Population – climate nexus
  2. Population health and climate change
  3. Climate change and energy
  4. Coastal zones and green growth
  5. Cities and climate change
  6. Climate finance and investment
  7. Climate change negotiations and diplomacy
  8. Adaptation and mitigation
  9. Food security and agrarian / rural communities
  10. Climate change and poverty
  11. Sustainable development goals
  12. Water resources management

“An environment for wellbeing: Pathways out of poverty”-learning from the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation programme

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Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) is a global interdisciplinary research programme that began in 2009 with the aim of giving decision-makers and natural resource users the evidence they need to address the challenges of sustainable ecosystem management and poverty reduction. The programme was developed by the UK government in response to the findings of the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment that substantial gains in human well-being in recent decades have been achieved at the expense of high and often irreversible levels of ecosystem degradation.

This short film highlights some of ESPA’s findings on the role of ecosystem services in diversifying livelihood options for vulnerable people, the contribution of sustainably managed ecosystem services to national wealth (and related poverty reduction), and insights into how to better manage ecosystems to deliver sustainable, green and inclusive growth. It features insights from ESPA Deltas and ECOLIMITS, looking at the ecological limits of poverty alleviation focusing on smallholder coffee farmers in Ethiopia, and cocoa farmers in Ghana.

“Migration always good? There’s no straight answer” published on thethirdpole.net

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by Rituparna Hajra and Tuhin Ghosh

A piece by Rituparna Hajra and DECCMA Co-PI Tuhin Ghosh entitled “Migration always good? There’s no straight answer” has been published on the website thethirdpole.net. The Third Pole is a multilingual platform dedicated to promoting information and discussion about the Himalayan watershed and the rivers that originate there. The article explains how climate change is forcing people out of the Sundarbans, and 75% of those left behind depend on remittances, while they face labour shortages in their own farms.

As agricultural productivity flounders in the Sundarbans, unskilled labour is all the residents have to sell (image by Mike Prince as published on thethirdpole.net)

 

“We need to give our citizens a safe place to stay” How government is relocating coastal communities affected by loss of land in the Mahanadi delta, India

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by Sumana Banerjee, Sumanta Banerjee, Dr R N Samal and Dr Tuhin Ghosh

Separated by thousands of miles but united by a common environmental fate, like the Pacific island nation of Kiribati which is facing the risk of being engulfed by rising seas, the Satavaya Gram Panchayat within India’s Mahanadi Delta has lost eleven villages to the sea. Recognising the threats to their citizens, the state government of Odisha has taken a pioneering and “humanitarian approach” to relocation, providing new homes and ensuring that appropriate livelihood support is available in the places where displaced communities are resettled.  Read more in a new photostory.

Encroaching sands threaten houses in Satavaya Gram Panchayat

New CARIAA brief on migration in climate change hotspots

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The Collaborative Adaptation Research in Africa and Asia (CARIAA) programme has just released an “In Brief” article entitled “Migration in climate change hotspots: opportunities and challenges for adaptation“.
The brief highlights how migration plays a significant role as a response strategy for coping with climatic and non-climatic drivers of change among vulnerable households in Ghana. Drawing on research by DECCMA and CARIAA sister project, Adaptation at Scale in Arid and Semi-arid Regions (ASSAR), it also shows how migration exacerbates gendered vulnerabilities with consequences for community resilience and national economic planning. DECCMA Ghana’s Research-into-Use focal point, Prosper Adiku, from the University of Ghana, is co-author of the brief.

DECCMA co-organises session on climate change, migration and adaptation at the South Asian Network on Economic Modelling annual conference in Bangladesh

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by Saiful Alam

DECCMA co-organised a session with the South Asian Network on Economic Modelling on “Climate change, migration and adaptation: Challenges and way forward for Bangladesh” at the 3rd SANEM Annual Economists’ Conference 2018. The conference was titled “Leave no one behind in South Asia” and took place on February 17-18, 2018 in Mohakhali, Bangladesh.

Mashfiqus Salehin introduces the DECCMA project

Dr. Mashfiqus Salehin, IWFM, gave an overview of the aims and objectives of the DECCMA project and the ways in which it has investigated the nature of climate hazards, vulnerability, adaptation and migration in coastal Bangladesh. He explained the empirical evidence received from extensive stakeholder engagement, the analysis of vulnerability in the hotspots and concluded with the importance of household adaptations in the reduction of climate related vulnerability in the coastal region.

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Dr. Bazlul Haque Khondker and Zubayer Hossen from SANEM presented DECCMA’s economic framework. This involved the use of stakeholder consultation to provide insights into the Input-Output table of Computable General Equilibrium model in explaining its linkages with livelihood, income and other economic parameters in the agriculture-dominated coastal environment.

Panelists Dr. Anwara Begum, BIDS and Mr. Saiful Alam, DECCMA, discussed the gender dimensions of adaptation and how the research findings on livelihoods and adaptation can influence climate-related policy and planning in Bangladesh. In an open discussion, the panelists answered a number of question from the audience related to the relevance to climate policy and the Sustainable Development Goals.

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ESPA Deltas project publishes short film on creating a sustainable future for climate-vulnerable deltas

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The Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation Delta Project has just published a short film that highlights its findings in Bangladesh. The project was concerned with assessing health, livelihoods, ecosystems and poverty alleviation in populous deltas to provide knowledge and tools to enable policy-makers to evaluate the effects of policy decisions on people’s livelihoods.

A multidisciplinary and multi-national team of policy analysts, social and natural scientists and engineers collectively used a participatory approach to create a model to formally evaluate ecosystem services and poverty in the context of the wide range of changes that are occurring. In the film, DECCMA Principle Investigator Professor Robert Nicholls and researcher Dr Helen Adams talk about the environmental and social stresses facing delta populations, from salinity and subsidence to poverty and marginalisation.

Synthesising migration findings in India from three CARIAA projects

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by Sumana Banerjee

With the Collaborative Adaptation Research In Africa and Asia (CARIAA) programme slowly heading towards to a completion, the thrust is now upon what we have learnt together as a research programme. In India, CARIAA has three consortia working in the different hotspots- deltas (DECCMA), mountains (Hi-AWARE) and semi-arid areas (ASSAR). Built into the programme design was the idea of the Country Table which gave a chance to the three consortia to provide a national perspective on different topics.

DECCMA, ASSAR and HI-AWARE teams at the India meeting

The India Country Table had met earlier for workshops and meetings during the life of CARIAA but the workshop on migration which was held at Kolkata on 19th January 2018 was different as it was the first time that the three consortia came together to share their findings on migration.  DECCMA-India​ (​Jadavpur University) ​hosted this one-day workshop on migration on the 19th January 2018 in Kolkata which was attended by researchers of ASSAR from Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS) and Hi-AWARE from The Energy Resources Institute (TERI). Dr. K S Murali from IDRC was also present.

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Migration experts Prof S Chandrasekhar of Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR, India) ​and Dr Amina Maharjan of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD, Nepal)​ provided feedback on the findings.

For an effective Research into Use effort, the Indian Country Table decided to produce policy briefs on three topics – Hotspots (led by Hi-AWARE-TERI), Adaptation (led by ASSAR-IIHS) and Migration (led by DECCMA-JU) and then share these with relevant policy makers. While dissemination of findings is encouraged at this stage of the programme, we realised the need to use the one day workshop to gather a clearer understanding of where we stand vis-à-vis migration across the respective hotspots.

Synthesising findings across different disciplines, hotspots, and methodologies on a topic which was not envisaged to be researched upon on a same scale by all the three consortia was a challenge. Moving beyond one’s own research methodology and bringing together qualitative and quantitative findings required some discussion. The feedback and guidance from the experts helped us identify some themes which could guide us to tie the findings from the three consortia together.

The workshop was a success. How effective are workshops if they don’t make one “work”?! The team is now working on the India migration policy brief which should be available online by March 2018.

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ESPA Deltas holds final workshop with the Planning Commission in Bangladesh

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by Saiful Alam

DECCMA builds on a project under the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme – ESPA Deltas. Following closure of ESPA Deltas in 2016 policy-makers in Bangladesh requested support in the use of tools developed within the project to assess the implications of government project proposals on ecosystem services and livelihoods in coastal Bangladesh. An additional year of funding was granted to ensure that the developed research could be translated into use to inform policy.

ESPA workshop (photo: Saiful Alam)

The final workshop of this extension project took place last week at the Planning Commission in Dhaka. Chaired by Professor Shamsul Alam, Senior Secretary in the General Economic Division of the Planning Commission, the workshop provided the opportunity for researchers to present their evaluations of the effect of three interventions proposed under the Delta Plan 2100.

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Research team members Professor Robert Nicholls and Dr Alex Chapman (University of Southampton) and Professors Md. Munsur Rahman, Mashfiqus Salehin and Anisul Haque (Institute of Water and Flood Management, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology) outlined the implications of three structural interventions under the Delta Plan 2100: ‘Green belt’ along the  coastal vulnerable area and sea walls along a selection of polders (sea-facing and a cluster in the south central part of the coast).

Professor Alam expressed his appreciation for the analysis and stated that it will allow more confidence about its application. DECCMA has furthered the evolving relationship with the Planning Commission. Professor Alam expressed his interest in DECCMA’s integrated assessment model to assess the impacts of cyclones on the coast, sediment management and water-logging.

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