Organisers: ICIMOD and Chattogram Hill Tracts Development Board

About the event

ICIMOD and Chattogram Hill Tracts Development Board (CHTDB) are co-organising a multistakeholder interaction and engagement to bring together all relevant stakeholders interested in investing in the Chattogram Hill Tracts (CHT) and wishing to support the wider adoption of nature-based solutions (NbS) to address environmental and societal challenges around water, disaster, and green livelihoods.

Objectives

The specific objectives are to:

• Develop a shared understanding on NbS and GESI-responsive NbS (What are NbS?)
• Sharing of existing good practices on NbS for water, disaster, and livelihoods in Bangladesh, especially in CHT
• Identify indicators for monitoring the effectiveness of NbS (What are the qualifiers for NbS?)
• Discuss enablers and barriers for scaling NbS (What is good? What needs improvement?)
• Identify key sites for generating proofs of concept (Where can we start?)
• Map the partnership landscape for collaborative actions on NbS for water security – springshed management (Who can join hands and contribute?)

Background

Today, it is imperative to look at development pathways from both the climate and biodiversity lenses, especially in countries where climate vulnerabilities are high and where people depend on nature for their livelihoods. Bangladesh is currently implementing its 8^th Five-year Perspective Plan (2020–2025), with the goal of promoting prosperity and fostering inclusiveness. The plan has six core themes, one of which is promoting a sustainable development pathway that is resilient to disaster and climate change. This calls for long-term planning and decision making on the part of government and synergistic efforts and support from non-state institutions. The vision of NbS allows the government to reimagine this development pathway from climate, biodiversity, disaster, economy, gender and socio-cultural perspectives, and cumulatively advance its nationally determined commitments for climate action, biodiversity conservation and management, disaster risk reduction, and sustainable development.

NbS are approaches to address environmental, social, and economic challenges that involve the conservation, restoration, or enhancement of natural or modified ecosystems. These solutions often have multiple benefits, such as improving the quality of air and water, providing habitat for biodiversity, protecting against natural disasters, and supporting human health and wellbeing. In Bangladesh, there is some level of effort in promoting NbS. Some examples include springshed management in the CHT region, green belt in coastal areas, floating agriculture, submersible embankments, tidal river management, climate-resilient agriculture, climate-resilient infrastructure (supported by ADB), and village common forests for ecosystem services (supported by UNDP), as well as sustainable tourism (supported by ICIMOD). Furthermore, a community of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers have collated several case studies on NbS such as floating agriculture, coastal afforestation, forest and protected area co-management, and swamp forest restoration. The Centre for Environment and Geographic Information System (CEGIS) has initiated action research on springshed management in the CHT with funding from the CHTDB.

This intervention on NbS from ICIMOD seeks to build upon this rich experience of institutions within Bangladesh, led by the overall government vision for a greener, sustainable, inclusive, climate resilience development pathway. The intervention on NbS will be supported by the Himalayan Resilience Enabling Action Programme (HI-REAP). This seven-year programme, supported by FCDO-UK’s Climate Action for a Resilient Asia (CARA) Programme, aims to build climate resilience in five countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, and Nepal. CARA aims to ‘deliver a major shift on resilience in Asia – moving from incremental and isolated investments to building systems resilience to climate change in Asia that unlocks action and finance needed for transformational adaptation’.

HI-REAP focuses on promoting regional cooperation and collaboration for policy influence and investment for scaling NbS and air pollution solutions. Wider adoption of gender equality and social inclusion (GESI)-responsive NbS is expected in three priority sectors: water, disaster, and mountain livelihoods. The NbS in each context will be co-developed, based on country-specific state programmes. In Bangladesh, HI-REAP seeks to develop a partnership that collectively leverage resources for co-designing and co-implementing GESI-responsive NbS under the leadership of the MoCHTA and in collaboration with CHTDB that looks after overall administration of the three CHT districts – Rangamati, Bandarban, and Khagrachari. The partnership is essential to sustain the efforts that MoCHTA is putting into implementing climate resilience actions at the national level. HI-REAP will support MOCHTA and CHTDB in designing and delivering GESI-responsive NbS with partners, especially NbS for water security, and garner support from a wider constituency for adoption and scaling.