By the International Institute for Environment and Development

The Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, will next week open an international conference at which more than 250 delegates will share the latest knowledge on how vulnerable communities can adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Dr Hasan Mahmud, Bangladesh’s Minister of Environment and Forests of Bangladesh will also be a special guest in the inaugural session of the 5th International Conference on Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change, which takes place in Dhaka from 28-31 March.

Other speakers will include Dr Rajendra Pachauri chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Eusuf Nassef, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Dr Atiq Rahman, executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) and Dr Saleemul Huq, senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development.

The conference — organised by Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) and the International Institute for Environment and Development — will be webcast live on the IIED website. It will have four days of themed discussions after three days of visits to community based adaptation projects in vulnerable areas of Bangladesh.

Rising seas, extreme weather, melting glaciers and changing patterns of disease threaten human health, food supplies, livelihoods, economies worldwide, but especially in the world’s poorest communities that have done least to cause the problem.

“While the world’s biggest polluters delay action on climate change, communities in the most vulnerable countries are already facing impacts,” says Dr Hannah Reid, a senior researcher in IIED’s climate change group. “Governments there need to include plans to adapt to climate change in their national development strategies but first they need to know what works best and how to finance effective actions.”

Speakers at the conference will share lessons from adaptation projects in settings as diverse as the highlands of Peru and Nepal, the coasts of Bangladesh, Fiji and the Philippines, the small-scale farms of South Africa and Mali, and the urban centres of India and Vietnam.

“The conference will highlight the ways for governments, donors and civil society organisations to help the poorest communities to increase their resilience to the changing climate,” says Dr Saleemul Huq, senior fellow in IIED’s climate change group. “People around the world are already adapting to climate change. We need to share knowledge and experience between policymakers, researchers and development agencies so that communities worldwide can benefit.”

From a press release