Knowledge sharing vital to fight climate change

People will learn to effectively battle climate change once they pick up the idea of sharing knowledge, experience and good practices, experts and professionals told the concluding session of a four-day international conference yesterday.

“Tackling climate change is inherently a learning-by-doing process,” said Dr Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB). 

“Bangladesh has actually done quite a lot. We now need to learn from what we have done before we do something more, particularly learn from past mistakes,” he told “Gobeshona Conference” in the ICCCAD situated on the capital's IUB campus.

Aiming to promote this form of participation, the conference was organised by Gobeshona, a knowledge sharing platform for climate change research on Bangladesh funded by UKAid and formed by multiple local and foreign institutions and organisations.

The day's focus was on government officials who shared experiences and lessons learnt while working on climate change and disaster management with activists worldwide.

The gathering saw presentation of over 100 papers by participants from research, academic, government and non-government organisations, private enterprises and media from home and abroad.

The topics included climate change and livelihood, water, health, migration, gender, renewable energy, natural resource management, political economy of climate change, disaster risk reduction, adaptation technologies, waste management, urbanisation, communication and using research for policy formulation.

These papers, alongside others of the platform, are available at www.gobeshona.net while it was decided to hold the conference every year.

Environment and Forests Minister Anwar Hossain Manju was present as chief guest while Secretary Nazibur Rahman and IUB Vice Chancellor Prof M Omar Rahman also spoke.