EU Delegation launches ‘Climate Adaptation Campaign’ in Bangladesh

The European Union Delegation to Bangladesh has started the "Climate Adaptation Campaign" on its social media.

As part of the "European Green Deal", the European Commission published a new and ambitious adaptation strategy on February 24 which aims to make the EU not only climate-neutral but also a climate-resilient society by 2050, said a press release today.

The strategy pursues four interlinked objectives: to make adaptation smarter, more systemic, and faster, and to step up international action.

"We need to act immediately. Now is the time to transform our societies and economies both in Europe as well as in Bangladesh. We need to move from "business as usual" approaches to integrated, longer-term strategies for adaptation and disaster risk management. We must ensure that the Covid-19 recovery agenda increases local adaptive capacity," said the release.

The EU has been already working and innovating on these areas in Bangladesh since 2016, funding a project called "Local Government Initiative on Climate Change" (LoGIC), contributing 15 million euros -- a joint initiative led by the Local Government Division of the Ministry of Local Government Rural Development together with EU, Sweden and implemented by UNDP and UNCDF.

LoGIC has been designed to support approximately 200,000 of the most vulnerable households in 72 unions of seven districts in Bangladesh. Following the success, LoGIC scaled up in 2021 and aims to double the number of beneficiaries in the next year and a half.

"Bangladesh is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries globally. The EU is aware that areas such as the southwest and the floodplains are particularly vulnerable, both from an economic and climate-change perspective, said Maurizio Cian, the head of Cooperation of the Delegation of the European Union to Bangladesh.

"It is fundamental to raise people's attention to climate adaptation because the effects of climate change are already here, so we need to do much more to adapt to the consequences and mitigate to the maximum possible extent. The new EU Adaptation Strategy launched in June 2021 will help us get there and provide a framework for further action in the years to come," he added.