Conference to discuss climate change adaptation measure

March 22, 2011
Tamale, March, 22, GNA - The Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, will next week open an international conference at Dhaka, Capital of Bangladesh to 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 will also be a special guest in the inaugural session of the 5th International Conference on Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change, which is slated for 28-31 March.

A statement from theInternational Institute for Environment and Development(IIED) copied to the Ghana News Agency in Tamale on Tuesday said other speakers at the event would include Dr Rajendra Pachauri chair of the Inter-governmental 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 which is being organized by Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) and theInternational Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)would be on the theme, "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".

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.

Dr Hannah Reid, a senior researcher in IIED's climate change group noted that while the world's biggest polluters delay action on climate change, communities in the most vulnerable countries were already facing impacts.

"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," he said.

Dr Saleemul Huq said the conference would highlight how Western-rich governments, donors and civil society organisations could help the poorest communities to increase their resilience to the changing climate.

"People around the world are already adapting to climate change. We need to share knowledge and experience between policy makers, researchers and development agencies so that communities worldwide can benefit," he said.

GNA