Managing Community Development in response to
Climate Change in the Ganga Basin
Workshop Summary
Friday 1 and Saturday 2 April, 2011
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Synopsis of the Workshop
Professor Chowdhury Abrar
Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
The conference was attended by more than 30 participants (including about 16 overseas
participants) representing various disciplinary backgrounds. The workshop was scheduled to
follow the international conference on Community-based Adaptation held in Dhaka in March
2011. As planned, we secured participation and insights from several participants together with
the key organisers of that workshop.
The workshop focused on the interface between research and policy, particularly the identification
of sustainable development strategies given likely climate change in South Asia. The workshop
took stock of what is being done at the community level in adapting to climate change. It covered
a diverse range of issues: knowledge management; river health; livelihood problems; geopolitics
of governance; land use; impact of arsenic on ground water; health; migration; and food security.
Key points follow:
1. It was acknowledged that technical experts and social scientists are working in isolation. This
needs to be corrected. The need for physical and social scientists to collaborate to garner
evidence, credible evidence, was highlighted. Technical experts appear to set the climate
change agenda and dominate the debates at the national level. That makes a strong case for
the two communities (physical and social scientists) to engage with each other.
2. It was felt that the global environmental agenda is dominated by the developed world
including the IPCC process. The North has a disproportionate say. Scientific evidence from the
South needs to be marshaled. There has to be collaboration across national boundaries. The
current project addresses river basin based collaboration. There is a very strong case for
immediate engagement. Robust evidence needs to be presented in peer-reviewed journals
before 2012, so that it can be fed into the next IPCC round.
3. It was noted that rural populations are in the front line of climate change and therefore
research and policy agenda must be geared toward that group. A counter point was made that
50 per cent of the world’s population live in the cities and they will also be affected by climate
change. A third position was made that the world is moving away from the rural-urban
dichotomy with a massive increase in the flow of information, goods, services, and knowledge.
4. There is a need to incorporate indigenous or local knowledge together with formal (empirical)
knowledge in a shared response to co-ordinate the policy actions of water resource
management agencies at the community level. Suggestions were also made to introduce
climate change in primary and secondary school curricula.
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5. It was noted that stakeholders and the community sector should have access to relevant and
easily understood science or knowledge to assist in the development of meaningful
management, behaviour change and adaptation solutions. New institutional frameworks are
required to support academic, practitioner and local experts (including local community
experts) to work together to develop a common future and desired livelihood scenario (the
South-east Queensland Healthy Waterways Partnership model is a good example of sciencepolicy linkage).
6. The participants have highlighted the need to have a range of climate change scenarios: spatial
and temporal. Likely scenarios that the communities may face should be provided to the
community members by the scientific community. Forward planning is important; natural
disasters can be good learning experience to prepare ourselves for what is likely to come.
7. Communities are adapting to the adverse impacts of climate change, although they may not be
aware of the global debates around climate change issues. Therefore, knowledge-driven
awareness campaigns may be directed. Suggestions were made to see climate vulnerability as
having a climate change aspect, i.e. what appears to be vulnerability in the short-term may
become a long-term vulnerability. On the other hand, decentralised institutions such as the
Panchayats in India, should be taken on board to provide inputs in macro level policy-making
process.
8. It was observed that so far little effort has been made to link Millennium development goals
and climate change issues. This gap needs to be addressed. Additionally, the question was
asked: how do we diversify livelihood to be less dependent on climate change; non-farm or off
farm activities?
9. A lot of emphasis on data generation and analysis.
10. Given the reality of general reticence by policy makers both at national and international levels
to act quickly, a recommendation was persuasively made that we must work out the costs of
action and costs of inaction.
11. Ill planned physical structures created to mitigate floods, train rivers and manage wetlands,
sometime have severe adverse consequences for the environment and ecology. Often, due to
poor maintenance, they bring on more hardship to the communities. Therefore, project
planning must take in to account potential environmental impact of development projects. It
was very strongly argued that one of the dangers of physical intervention is often there is no
plan after the initial project life finishes.
12. Bringing about changes in tenurial systems was thought to be a major element in any
successful sustainable effort. Land reform was identified to be of crucial importance in this
regard. Attention was drawn to shrinkage of wetland ecosystems at massive socio-ecological
cost due to unplanned urban growth or to urban sprawl. Therefore, urban planning needs to
be holistic, incorporating community participation.
13. In tackling environmental disasters such as water logging, floods in the cities due to canal
siltation and wetland encroachments, there is a need to create a knowledge base, even
exploring archival history to show how these ecosystems functioned and were preserved and
maintained in the earlier days.
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14. We discussed the issue of food waste. Recommendation was made to put food waste in the
pre-harvest, harvest and post-harvest production cycles into top research, policy and
management priorities.
15. Specific recommendation was made to select 3-5 authors to identify parameters, sequencing
and local ecologies for climate change in the region.
16. A case was made to make migration an important adaptation strategy. Different studies on
cyclone hit; flood affected; and riverbank erosion areas, show that during slow onset
processes, migration of a member or a few members becomes an option for a number of the
households. This migration can be temporary, seasonal, or permanent to secure income for
the family. During sudden onset events, a large section of the community migrate, temporarily
or permanently. Yet, adaptation to climate change literature hesitates to help temporary or
seasonal migration of affected households. It was argued that migration should be used as one
of the many adaptation strategies. For example, in the Bangladeshi context, the government
can facilitate this by establishing vocational training centres, setting migration processing
offices and private recruiting agencies close to the climate change affected areas. The
government adaptation fund should be used to establish such infrastructure. Proper
interfacing of the concerned government agencies such as the environment ministry and
overseas employment ministry may be made.
17. There was a general agreement about the need to develop knowledge management as a
means of incorporating relevant disciplines and providing a synthesis for informing effective
governance of the Ganga basin.
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