1. Title of the project:  Development of Center for Coastal Climate Resilient (C3R)

2. Problem Definition
Depending on the geomorphologic features, coastal zone of Bangladesh can broadly divide into three regions:  Eastern, Central and The Western based on tidal fluctuations; salinities and cyclone & storm surge risk. The proposed project area is situated in South-West Coastal region of Bangladesh. The southwest coastal zone of Bangladesh is a disaster-prone area and one of the climate change hotspots. The area is one of the poverty-stricken areas of the country where 16.62% are completely land less and 67.08% belongs under 50 decimals land that are also treating as land less according to the Government policy. The Coastal Embankment Project (CEP) was built to protect saline water but it often breached out due to poor maintenance and pressure of wave action that inundate agricultural lands. Due to Sea level Rise (SLR), beaches of embankment, salinity has been increased in the soil and water. People initiated shrimp farming in the area taking advantage of saline water, but it further creates more salinity in the area. For sea level rise, salinity ingression, increasing natural disaster, irregular rainfall people cannot cultivate in the agricultural land round the year though the agriculture is the dominating factor of coastal economy.

The area is one of the most disaster-prone area of the country and the world due to its geographical location. Almost every year, the area face or supposed to face remarkable cyclones signal level of 3-7, this disaster creates anxiety of the community people. In the last decades, several remarkable disasters attacked in the respective project area. Cyclone SIDR, November 2007, cyclone Nargis in 2008, Cyclone AILA, May 2009, cyclone Mohasen May 2013, Cyclone Helen, November 2013, Cyclone Hudud October 2014, Cyclone Komen, July 2015, Cyclone Roanu, May 2016, and Mora May 2017, etc. The frequent disaster signals frighten the people and people think that they can’t live here in the long run.

Due to salinity intrusion, sea level rise and safe landing ground of catastrophic disasters, shrimp cultivation, people are immersed in distress in their livelihoods which force them to extract resources from Sundarbans or to migrate to safer places for better livelihood. The shrimp induced unemployed people are getting engage into forest resource collection. While the poor people go into the Sundarbans to earn their livelihood, they often become victims of tigers. A significant number of tiger victims’ widows living in this area. The alarming thing on this aspect is significant numbers of people are under threat of forced migration and some are already migrated from this area for their livelihood to the better place and opportunities which are known as climate forced migrants. On the other hand, river bank erosion is also forcing to migrate people to other places but due to lack of financial solvency they cannot migrate to other places and living alongside river in inhuman conditions. According to recent study of BRAC University[1], 7,900 people already migrated from Munshigonj and Gabura Union of Shyamnagar Upazila of Satkhira district in last four years. The male member who are migrating from the working area did not came back. For that a significant number of women are abandoned in this area and these women headed families are increasing day by day in this area. According to the national population census of Bangladesh, people from coastal sub district are reduced in last 10 years, whereas population growth rate is 17.11% in the country. It is alarming for the coastal area and arena of climate migrants.  

Source: National population census of Bangladesh/ statistical pocket book of Bangladesh 2012, P-118-119
1. http://www.prothom-alo.com/detail/date/2013-06-23/news/362570

Some national and local NGOs initiated Micro-credit program for poverty reduction. They offer the micro-credit to the people with interest. Vulnerable groups taking micro-credits for coping, but NGOs are not providing skill training and appropriate technology. For that reason, people always misuse the money and are sinking into debt. 92% of the poor people of the coastal area are engaging with the micro-credit program and they now grabbed of debt cycle. The deteriorating physical environment further impacted livelihoods of the poor, ethnic minority and women headed families. In this process poverty has become an extreme case for these people.

There have some NGOs who are providing support to the community for resilient and mostly short-term basis. Most of the climate change adaptation and mitigation is project base and the NGOs left the beneficiaries after completion of the project with any reasonable sustainability plan. In the community, there have indigenous copping and adaptation technologies. But most of the NGO project ignore the indigenes practice and introduce more scientific practice which is very hard for community people. Within this situation, some national and international NGOs introduce some technology in the community but there have no any initiatives for scaling up copping/adaptation mechanism for the community.

Access to information on climate change, adaptation, mitigation is very poor of the vulnerable community. Through there have lot of information regarding this, process of information dissemination is not suitable for the vulnerable community. Besides this, ICT base information dissemination can play an important role, but there has no much initiative to develop digital content. Technology transfer is one of the mechanisms to bring the community resilient. But there have no any significant initiatives where people can get information about their desire technology.

LEDRAS is working on the climate change issue since 2003. To reduce climate induced migration from the coastal area and enhancing the resilient process of the community, LEDARS is determining to establish this Center for Coastal Climate Resilient(C3R) in the coastal area of Bangladesh.

3. Goal and objective of the project:

Goal: Improved quality of life of the climate vulnerable people in southwest coastal region of Bangladesh.
Overall objectives of the project: Enhanced resilient capacity to reduce climate induced vulnerabilities of southwest coastal community.

Specific objective: The specific objectives of the initiative are to;

1. Develop digital content and information hub on climate change,
2. Documentation and dissemination of local level best practice of the community;
3. Demonstrate the adaptive technology to show community people,
4. Provide skill training to the community people through class room and practical session
5. Develop supplementary text book for school and college level students
6. Provide capacity building training to the NGO/CBOs staff and other interested people 
7. Develop linkage with the universities and research institute (Khulna university) to conduct thesis/research in the ground level,
8. To provide technical support to the community on climate change resilient initiatives,
9. Capacity building of local NGOs, CBOs and Local Government Institute on development of local adaptation plan of action,

4. Site Description:

LEDARS already bought (2010) one acre (158 decimals) of land in Munshigonj Mouza in Shyamnagar Upazila in Satkhira district with support of 2 different donors. The area is extreme southwest coastal region of Bangladesh where people are migrating to other area for their livelihoods. LEDARS already established a small training center, library, laboratory and an administrative building at the premises.

5. Project Implementation Strategy:

The initiative will implement by following strategy,

• Scaling up the local knowedge: The center will work with the community people to scale up the adaptation and copping strategies and technologies in the field level. The project will find search the community’s best practices, innovative ideas, develop documentation and disseminate to the communities and NGOs/CBOs or development organizations.
• Access to information: A digital information hub will be established in the center on climate change, adaptation, mitigation related information to create access of the community and other stakeholders. The center will collect important document, translate it and disseminate to the relevant stakeholders. Besides this a regular news letter will be published by the center on climate change studies, different information which need community people, people’s best practices, people’s initiatives and struggles, development activities of different NGOs on climate change, etc.
• Community capacity building on resilient: The project will build capacity of the community people on resilient strategies through theoretical and practical training, demonstration of the resilient technology, cross learning visit, etc.
• Technology transfer: The center will identify the suitable technology for the coastal peoples, demonstrate the technology and display in the center. All the scientific and indigenes technology will be displayed there. The community people will open for the people to show the technology. Development organization or NGOs can bring their beneficiaries to exchange knowledge in the center.
• Capacity building of LEBs and NGOs: The center will help to Local Government Institute (LGI) to develop local level resilient plan for their constituencies and resources mobilization to implement their resilient plan. The center will develop short course on climate change for the NGO activist and students. The center will offer training to the NGO activist and interested students on climate change, adaptation, mitigation, negotiations, etc. with a minimum fee.
• Partnership with researcher: The center will provide establish partnership with Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE), Khulna University and SRDI and other international institute to conduct action research here in coastal area. The center will provide accommodation support to the researchers and provide some essential cost to do action research. Through the center, the scientist and researcher will work with community people/farmers to do some action researches. The center enables rapid exchange of adaptation knowledge, disaster preparedness and technical support to the beneficiaries.
• Establish a support system for the community and NGOs: This is an initiative to develop a climate change institute to work as a knowledge hub and support system for climate change resilient of the community, development activities and other stakeholders,

6. Innovation:

This is the preliminary initiative to establish Center for Coastal Climate Resilient(C3R) which will be first in the coastal area of Bangladesh. The project will find out existing best practice in the community level, customize and replicate to the community for best fit to the salinity context. The local and indigenous knowledge are available in the community that is neglected by the scientist and the community people also ignore the scientific information. Our proposed initiative will combine of both knowledge and promote in the community level. The initiatives will gather all relevant information on climate change from different organization and will publish in local language to ensure access to information of Bengali people. The project will introduce ICT base climate related information management. The initiative will enable rapid exchange of climate change and disaster preparedness knowledge to the community. The initiative will provide proper knowledge and guidance to the development practitioners who are working in the coastal area. The interested organization/community people will get complete information package from the center.