IC-CSD 2025

(Details coming soon)

Session description: Bangladesh faces mounting climate losses but lacks a national mechanism to systematically address them or access global funds. This exploratory session maps the state of knowledge on loss and damage, evidence gaps, and the institutional and financial steps needed to establish a National Mechanism on Loss and Damage (NMLD).

Session Objectives:

1. Map the current state of knowledge, and the sporadic initiatives on loss and damage (L&D) in Bangladesh.
2. Identify evidence and institutional gaps for creating a National Mechanism on Loss and Damage (NMLD).
3. Discuss financial architecture and readiness needed to access the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD).

Guiding Questions for Discussion:

1. Setting the Scene: Where does Bangladesh stand on L&D?
What is the current status of efforts to establish an NMLD?
Why do we need a national mechanism in the first place-what problem is it solving?
Who is leading this (e.g., DoE, Focal Point)? What plans exist for the coming months (Oct - Dec)?
2. Evidence and Design of the NMLD
What evidence exists on L&D in Bangladesh, and where are the gaps?
How can we build an inclusive and participatory NMLD - one that integrates local knowledge, political commitment (election manifestos?), and financial sustainability?
What lessons can Bangladesh adapt from other countries (e.g., Vanuatu)?
3. Financial Structures and Readiness for the FRLD
What institutional, fiduciary, and monitoring systems must be in place to access the Fund?
How do we ensure transparency, accountability, and equity in fund allocation?
Should financing rely mainly on external donors, or can domestic sources be mobilized for co-financing and sustainability?

(Details Coming Soon)

Bangladesh stands at the frontline of climate change, where rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, and resource scarcity are putting unprecedented pressure on how people access energy, grow food, and secure clean water. These three essentials are deeply interconnected—energy powers irrigation and food production, agriculture shapes water use, and water availability influences both food and energy systems. Yet, policies and practices often treat them in isolation, creating gaps and inefficiencies. This session will spotlight why looking at the energy–food–water nexus together is critical for ensuring energy and food security, livelihoods, strengthening rural resilience, and building a truly climate-smart Bangladesh.

Objectives-
The session aims to build a shared understanding of the energy–food–water (EFW) nexus in Bangladesh, with a focus on how integrated approaches can enhance energy and food security in rural areas. Through cross-sectoral dialogue, participants will work toward developing actionable policy recommendations that embed the EFW nexus into national and sectoral policies—ensuring solutions are practical, scalable, and aligned with Bangladesh’s climate-smart development goals.

Outcome- 
The dialogue will produce a commentary piece that captures not only the policy insights and stakeholder commitments but also the urgency, opportunities, and stories that emerge from the discussion. Written in an accessible yet authoritative style, this piece will serve as both a record of the session and a call to action—highlighting how an integrated energy–food–water approach can transform rural livelihoods, guide policymakers, and inspire partnerships for climate-smart solutions in Bangladesh and beyond.

Coastal waterscapes are ecotone between sea and earth, between sweet and saline water. 

Coastal communities are benefiting from either fresh water to crop cereals and salt water to access marine products. Embankment and polders have been built to protect human settlements and crops. However, since 1980 onward, shrimp farming has expanded in most areas. This production has involved a new balance between saline and sweet water, and further saline water intrusion. The salinisation of freshwater sources lead to a decline in vegetation in very sensitive ecosystems. 

More recently, cyclones and storm surges have further turned fresh water areas into saline bodies of water. Increased temperature and heatwaves, evaporation and evapotranspiration induce droughts further exacerbate the situation. 

As a result, there is a severe shortage of sweet water for crops (vegetables, rice) on which depend communities’ livelihoods for their food production, and safe drinking water is getting scarse, with women and children being particularly vulnerable and often suffering from diseases.

In response to the crisis and the imperative for regional water sustainability, we question the technical strategies deployed by communities and by local authorities to manage the sweet and the saline water supplies. We question how the distribution of water resources is governed. 

Understanding the water governance of water resources in coastal areas leads us to first look at : 

• coastal communities vernacular practices, 

• governement conventional solutions  

• and more recent nature and community based solutions recommended by international NGOs to adapt with tidal dynamics, and extreme weather. Multiple interventions based on the Nature-based Solution (NbS) framework have been implemented and evaluated. 

We question the effectiveness of these multiple approaches to water management and the interventions to mitigate the crisis and achieving sustainable water management. 

This session aims to explore and assess effective water management through systematic knowledge exchange and case study analysis across the region.

Knowledge serves as a critical foundation for designing any ground-level intervention, particularly in addressing coastal vulnerabilities. Context-specific knowledge can bridge policymakers, practitioners, and academia, enabling transformative change to confront these challenges. However, significant barriers persist in translating knowledge into action, policies, and practical solutions, as well as in addressing existing gaps. This session aims to explore pathways for overcoming these barriers and enhancing the effective use of knowledge at scale

The IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC, 2019) emphasizes the urgent need to protect and restore marine ecosystems facing escalating climate stress. Chapter 5 highlights two core pathways for climate mitigation through blue carbon ecosystems:

1. Maintaining the integrity of natural carbon sinks to prevent greenhouse gas emissions.

2. Enhancing long-term carbon sequestration in mangroves, seagrasses, and tidal marshes.

Community perceptions about blue carbon ecosystems are varied in nature which may be significantly different from an understanding of how the market-based blue carbon interventions have proceeded. Communities often link these critical ecosystems to their livelihoods and cultural identities, and struggle with multifaceted impacts on their tenure rights, entitlements and resulting inequities. The session will bring these important issues into discussion and aim to lay some broad contours of an inclusive governance system that can promote conservation of blue carbon ecosystems through strengthening tenure security, developing capacity, ensuring equity and helping craft collaborative management.

Session Objectives

This session will explore the intersection of blue carbon governance, marine tenure, and equity, drawing on insights from global, regional, and local contexts. The goals are to:

1. Highlight  case studies from : Bangladesh, India,  Malaysia, Japan, Thailand and Indonesia to understand the diverse communities experiences and their responses to blue carbon interventions. The session will critically examine the governance challenges of blue carbon initiatives, including carbon markets, and co-management.

2. Discuss potential mechanisms for ensuring that blue carbon strategies are inclusive, equitable.  

Session Outputs (what will be achieved or are expected at the end of the session):

1. Present country case studies that presents community perception of blue carbon ecosystems (Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia) to identify governance gaps in blue carbon ecosystem strategies.

2. What would it mean to think about community-based blue carbon management / conservation.

3. Develop recommendations for inclusive and equitable governance mechanisms that integrate marine tenure and local community rights into a synthesis of actionable recommendations for equitable strategies.

This interactive workshop will bring together educators, researchers, and practitioners to co-create measurable indicators for evaluating the effectiveness of climate change education in Bangladesh and the wider Global South. Building on the EU GreenComp framework and the ongoing ACCESS4ALL project, participants will explore how skills such as empathy, collective awareness, and leadership can be meaningfully assessed. Through a mix of panel dialogue, group work, and hands-on mapping exercises, participants will design context-sensitive metrics that respond to local realities while contributing to global conversations on sustainability education. The outcomes will inform academic research, curriculum development, and practical implementation in institutions and communities worldwide.

Outputs:

• A collaboratively developed set of quantifiable indicators to measure the effectiveness of climate change education, with an assessment framework adaptable to Global South educational contexts, and aligned with the aims of the ACCESS4ALL project to make education more inclusive and skills-oriented.

• Workshop proceedings and a summary report to be integrated into ACCESS4ALL’s green resource hub.

Short-Term Impacts:

• Strengthened the capacity of CSD and ESS-ULAB to design and apply effective, context-specific tools for assessing climate education, particularly relevant to the Global South, where formal curricula and informal learning interact..

• Integration of findings into ongoing CSD research under ACCESS4ALL, supporting its objective to equip learners with in-demand green skills.

• Evidence to develop action research projects on sustainability in education, one of the focus areas of CSD research.

Long-Term Impacts:

• Contribution to peer-reviewed academic publications and potential development of project proposals to scale these tools in other Global South contexts.

• Evidence-based assessment for integrating soft skills into national education policies, ensuring that climate education fosters behavior change as well as technical competencies.

• Strengthened sustainability and climate change curriculum across the Global South that better prepares the future workforce to lead sustainable transitions and address climate challenges.

(Details coming soon)

 (Details coming soon)