PROJECT PROPOSAL 1 PROJECT SUMMARY PROJECT NAME PROMOTING CLIMATE

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DATE INDIANA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION ATTN INDOT PROJECT MANAGER
LYNLEY SHIMAT LYS MIAP INTRO FINAL PROJECT HADASSAH FILM

PROJECT NAME NJDOT SCOPE STATEMENT TSM LIMITED SCOPE FINAL
[PROJECT NAME] PARTNERSHIP STORY AGENCY PROJECT CONTACT NAME LOCATION
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Project Proposal

Project Proposal

  1. Project Summary

Project Name

Promoting Climate Resilient Bangladesh

Project Acronym

PCRB

Project Location

Khulna, Patuakhali, Satkhira and Sunamganj Districts

Country

Bangladesh

Project value and Contribution:

3 million GBP (DFID-50% and IR UK – 50 %)

Beneficiaries (Direct and indirect)

Direct beneficiaries (16,400 HH/78,800 individuals)

Indirect beneficiaries (8,026 HH/36,445 individuals)

Project Summary

The project aims to assist the poor disaster vulnerable communities of Bangladesh in adapting the adverse impact of Climate Change and also in reducing the risk factors of disasters so that they can sustain their livelihood and better life for the future. The Super Goal of the project is to contribute in achieving the targets of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of the government of Bangladesh in the face of increased natural disasters and climate change. It will contribute to the National Plan for Disaster Management (NPDM) 2010-2015 and also to the National Water Management Plan (NWMP).

Project Impact

The project will contribute directly to the progress of the country towards all major development and resilience framework and strategies in place at global and national level. It is very difficult to estimate as multiple factors are in place, but specific measures will be taken in close collaboration of the national government, mandated organisations, dedicated project teams and other relevant stakeholders in this regard. This can be measured by the number of policy and programme related measures taken in joint partnership with the Government of Bangladesh at national level. At local level partnerships with the administrative functions on climate and disaster risk management will be established and their capacity to leverage at least 10 % increase in climate adaptive financing will be ensured at the end of the project period. 3 major project introduced successful models and initiatives will be replicated and up-scaled by the government and communities own initiative.

Project Outcomes/Outputs:

  • Improved rural livelihood strategies of the vulnerable communities through introduction of climate adaptive livelihood measures and capacity building towards predicted conditions of climate change

  • Improved policy and institutional arrangements to plan and deliver climate resilient development approaches at local level (Institutional strengthening)

  • Build capacities of DMCs, community organisations and partners to effectively respond to disasters and implement socially inclusive and innovative community based climate change adaptation and mitigation

  • Enhanced sharing, learning and reflection on practical experience and good models of climate change mitigation and adaptation for integration at local, national and global level

Implementing Partner

To be selected in the first 3 months of the project as per IR Global partnership assessment process.

Sector

Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Change, Water, Sanitation, Livelihoods, Community Physical Infrastructure

Project Period

1 November, 2012 to 31 October 2015

Contact person in Field for the project

Shabel Firuz

Country Director

House No. 10, Road No. 10, Baridhara, Dhaka 1212

Telephone: +88-02-8819392, +88-02-9893458

Fax: +88-02-8825119

Email: [email protected]


Syed Shahnawaz Ali

Head of Integration, Climate Change and Disaster Resilience

House # 10, Road # 10, Block - K

Baridhara, Dhaka 1212

Phone: +880 2 8819392 (Extn. 227), Fax: +880 2 8825119

Email: [email protected]


Contact person in IRW for the project

Haroon Altaf

Regional Programme Coordinator – Asia Region

International Programmes Division

Islamic Relief Worldwide

International Headquarters

Tel: +44 (0)121 622 0708

Fax: +44 (0)121 622 5003

Email: [email protected]



  1. Strategic Framework


The project strategic framework is guided by the international and national frameworks and action plan on risk reduction and climate change adaptation. As said in the BCCSAP’09 “The combination of frequent natural disasters, high population density, poor infrastructure and low resilience to economic shocks make Bangladesh especially vulnerable to climatic risks. The high incidence of poverty and heavy reliance of poor people on agriculture and natural resources increases their vulnerability to climate change”. Vulnerability results from people being exposed to hazards that present an unacceptable level of risk to personal safety and their livelihood. The hazard is therefore the “trigger” that exposes the vulnerable elements of the community to greater risks. In practice, this usually refers to the poorest of society. Identifying, analyzing and assessing potential negative impacts of hazards and then targeting risk that is specific to communities will lead to an increase in community resilience and a decrease in duration of negative impacts as a result of this.


According to the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP) 2009 “Climate Change will exacerbate many of the current problems and natural hazards the country faces”, it is then apprehended that climate change will lead to dramatic changes in different economical sectors in Bangladesh. It includes taking account of the natural hazards into public and private sector decision-making in the same way that environmental and social impact assessments are currently required. Advocating for developing or modifying policies, laws, and organizational arrangements, as well as plans, programmes, and projects, to integrate disaster risk reduction; and also to allocate sufficient resources to support and maintain them.


In that prospect, IRB aims to implement a comprehensive and integrated program in the coastal areas as well as in the haor basin so that the communities over there can increase their resilience against the climatic vulnerabilities, come up with some disaster risk reduction activities and create some income generating activities. IRB will address both the underlying factors of poverty under selected areas of 04 Districts as their on-going and projected climate change vulnerabilities. Many poverty reduction strategies have potential to address the underlying risks and to recognize disaster impacts as a contributing factor to poverty. However, the disaster risk reduction components in such strategies are often limited to preparedness and response aspects. In this particular program, Climate Change Adaptation (CCA), Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and poverty reduction are strongly integrated in terms of activities and quest of knowledge.


Continuing to build community resilience through identifying and expanding indigenous coping capacities and strengthening traditional warning systems have been considered as very important strategies and integrated as major thrusts of the project. Marginalized groups (women, children, disabled persons and the hardcore poor) will be specifically targeted with a goal to strengthening their capacity and confidence to access a range of support services with a view to minimizing the personal negative impacts associated with disaster situations. The project development framework recognizes that the success of this strategy lies in the sustainability of project interventions and that lower level committees and organizations are best positioned to provide this support at a frequency that will result in tangible outcomes at the community level.


  1. Project Rationale


    1. Context


Bangladesh, the largest tropical delta and one of the least developed countries in the world, is situated in between the Bay of Bengal in the south and the mighty Himalayas in the north. It is one of the most disaster prone areas in the world. A series of disasters including flood, cyclonic storms, tidal surges, droughts, tornadoes, riverbank erosion, earth quake, etc. occur in Bangladesh regularly and frequently. The most devastating cyclone and flood of the world occurred in Bangladesh. During the twentieth century and the first decade (ongoing decade) of the twenty first century, a number of devastating floods submerged most of the parts of the country, particularly the river basin areas. On the other hand, during the same period, a series of terrible cyclones/tidal surges visited the coastal districts and off shore islands of the country.


Extensive floods and cyclones greatly affect the marginal population who loss whatever assets they have and suffer from lack of work and wages. The cyclones, originating over the Bay of Bengal on their onward journey towards mainland whipped up tidal surges overloading vast tracts of land with heavy loss of life besides uprooting trees and homesteads leaving behind trails of devastation. During last three decades, flood plain land, the riverine char and its adjacent areas unfortunately met to overwhelming floods. Till to date from 1871, Bangladesh faced more than 30 devastating floods. On the other hand, the coast and off shore islands had a cruel hit by two dreadful cyclones.


The Southern areas targeted by IRB are symptomatic to this trend. In 2007 and 2009 southern areas were hit by cyclone SIDR and AILA that saw families lost their homes, livelihoods, and infrastructure once again, although due to the nature of the cyclone the loss of life was far less. The past experiences of disaster and the hazardous environment in which they live have shaped the way in which communities and individuals are responding to risks: the population is characterised by a low level of resilience1 to disaster, a consequence not only of the huge damage done during SIDR and AILA but also in part due to the lack of knowledge (indigenous or otherwise) on resilience issues.


The North Eastern area also called Haor Basin is subject to very peculiar conditions and suffers from extensive annual flooding. This makes livelihoods extremely vulnerable and limits the potential for agriculture production and rural enterprise growth. For 6 to 7 months of the year, the cropped land is completely inundated. Strong wave action adds to the vulnerability as it can potentially wash away the land and poses a major threat to many villages in the Haor. Rural poor households have to depend upon fisheries and off-farm labour. The communication infrastructure is poorly developed with submersible rural roads providing some connectivity during the dry season and boats being the main source of communication during the flood season. The poor communication network limits the incentives for increasing production, discourages rural growth, limits access to markets and off-farm employment opportunities and limits access to existing social services particularly health and education. Strong wave action adds to the vulnerability as it can potentially wash away the land and poses a major threat to many villages in the Haor. Protection of villages against flood action, proper management of the fishery resources and securing existing livelihoods such as crop and animal production are critical needs for the poor rural households living in the Haor region.


3.2 Problem


Bangladesh is a disaster-prone country, the geographical settings and various other anthropogenic features make the country vulnerable to frequent and devastating natural disasters. Due to unplanned urbanization, increasing trend of population and impact of climate change, an increased number of disaster events are occurring characterized by small scale to large scale. The country's vulnerability lies in the fact that it is an exceedingly flat, low-lying, alluvial plain covered by over 230 rivers/rivulets with 580 kilometres (approximately) of exposed coast line along the Bay of Bengal. Due to its geographic features, Bangladesh frequently suffers from devastating floods, cyclones, storm surges, tornados, cold wave, riverbank erosion and drought. The country’s precarious perch in between two tectonic plates exposes it to devastating earthquakes in near future.


Bangladesh rated as the nation most at risk from extreme weather and geophysical events - study ranking 229 countries on their vulnerability to natural disasters (NDRI 2010-2011). The history of striking disaster in Bangladesh gives a devastating scenario with the country ranked first out of 162 countries based on human exposure due to flood related hazards and third based on economic exposure. It is ranked sixth out of 89 countries based on human exposure in terms of cyclone related hazards and twelfth from economic exposure. For earthquake, the country ranked seventeenth out of 153 countries based on human exposure and forty-second out of 153 countries based on economic exposure.


Poverty reduction strategies and initiatives in Bangladesh are always affected over the years because the government and the development agencies are always forced to increase allocation of financial and human resources to respond to the natural disasters. Humanitarian funding requirements per emergency have also increased by nearly 50%, reflecting a reform in humanitarian action that includes early recovery and preparedness (ALNAP). This situation demands vision of a holistic disaster management programme in Bangladesh considering a transition from a response and relief focus to preparedness and risk reduction approach in disaster management.


Over Past 20 Years:


In different disasters over the past 20 years, a total of 135 million people have been affected, out of which 16,513 were life casualties. The total amount of resulting damage in terms of economy was 11.7 million USD (EM-DAT). In 1970, a severe cyclone took a toll of 0.3 millions human lives in Bangladesh while the toll fingered 0.14 millions in 29 April 1991. In 2007, devastating `Sidr’ hits coastal belt of the country affecting all the 32 coastal districts by damaging lives and livelihood immensely while cyclone Aila made significant livelihood losses in the coastal districts.


In 1988, devastating flood hits countrywide including 52 districts resulted lost of 1,517 human lives while 65 days long flood inundated 53 districts in 1998. A total of 140,512 people were affected by diarrhoea all over the country since the advent of prolonged flood on July 30, 2007.


Although most of the earthquakes hit inconsequentially, Bangladesh is one of the vulnerable country from earthquake due to its surroundings by the regions of high seismicity. Over the years, river erosion considered as one of the major disasters of Bangladesh both from natural and man-made due to the impact of climate change and human intervention as well. A research shows, (CEGIS, 2011) almost 0.1 million peoples become homeless in every year due to river erosion.


The problems of the people living in the coastal regions and in the haor basin are mostly generated from disasters and geographical isolation that are being aggravated by climate change impact. Poverty in these regions is as much shaped by the ecological condition and disasters as it is determined by socio-economic dynamics. Livelihoods, food security, health, hygiene and sanitation and community resilience mostly depend on the natural hazards. Disaster coping and climate change adaptation capacity of the community people is not satisfactory.


Climate change adds a new dimension to community risk and vulnerability. Although the magnitude of these changes may appear to be small, they could substantially increase the frequency, unpredictability and intensity of existing climatic events (floods, droughts, cyclones etc). Current indications are that not only will floods and cyclones become more severe and frequent; they will also start to occur outside of their “established seasons”. Reduced access to formerly limited resources in Bangladesh will be the most convoluted of all human climate change consequences. Lack of governance in narrowly based and non transparent decision making process, poor service to mass people, excessive cost, misallocation of resources, poor coordination in private and public sectors, lack of transparency and political commitment make country even more vulnerable.


Local community is the one of the most vulnerable due to Global Climate Change. Though the Development Disaster is the key factor to influence and bringing the disaster in that area but Global Climate Change is making complex the vulnerability of that area. It is proved scientifically that due to the Climate Change number of stronger cyclone is hitting the coastal area and this area bear the mark of this statement. Salinity intrusion due to sea level rise as the consequences of the climate change is making more saline prone area and forcing thousands of people to migrate. There are several environmental problem existed such as the consequences of Shrimp farming and the polder system, Environmental Mismanagement etc which is making harder for the community to reduce poverty but the cyclone is making hardest to reach with the goal of poverty reduction and meeting the goal of MGDs ultimately. Mangrove forest diversity is decreasing as a result of salinity and the countless massive destruction of floral and faunal diversity caused during the cyclone sidr and aila. And the restoration of that destruction is in still not enough. Meanwhile another cyclone and the odds of climate change may lead the community with millions of death and may force the community to leave their native places. This may create complex problem in the policy and plan of the country like Bangladesh. Now Sundarban is not in a position to cope with the cyclone like sidr. So recovery and restoration of the both community people and the floral community is the substantial steps to combat with climate change. Moreover during rainy season the rivers carry huge water from upstream and the tidal surge in rainy season creates flood in the villages. The extreme temperature accelerating the glacier melting and the sea level rise. Due to the geographical position, elevation and topography, sea level rise and the glacier melting from the upstream making and prolonging the flood in this area. The houses are submerging in high tide and low tide incidence. And the frequent, unusual tidal water submerging the whole area and due to salinity it’s totally impossible to practice regular cultivation and income generation.


Though over the past couple of decades Bangladesh made marvellous progress in human development, yet severity of extreme poverty is existed in some geographically backward and highly disaster prone areas. Due to the climate change influence intensity of super disasters has been increased and fighting the poverty has gradually been become difficulties. Yet over the past decade Bangladesh has achieved tremendous progress in disaster risk management. The impact of natural disaster is reducing however this is mainly due to the capacity and resilience of the affected community rather than the established disaster response systems. It has been well documented in various studies that communities in Bangladesh have enormous coping capacities to cyclones and floods and during threats and disaster situations it is the community that are the first responders. They rely very little on assistance from outside. Nonetheless, due to climate change influences such as global warming and sea level rise, Climate variability issues associated with El Nino and La Nina conditions are reported to influence the frequency and severity of cyclones, floods and drought. Sea level rise on the other hand will present far greater risks to coastal and island communities.


Moreover, increases in population, over extraction of resources, exclusion and marginalisation from govt.’s development planning process also create “development induced” disasters such as waterlogging that have the potential to have significant negative impacts on communities that will bring new considerations into the development planning process.


Climate change adaptation and mitigation, two ways are considered as the weapons of the vulnerable people to survive within the new situations to be created due to climate change effects. Domestic response and risk reduction capacities of the people living in the highly disaster prone areas are also considered as the additional strengths to cope with any unpredictable situation to be created from horrible natural disasters than those are being currently occurred.

The social status and livelihood is very much linked and these two things are depended on ecosystem services. As this community belongs to this large Mangrove forest they are depended on the ecosystem services of the mangrove forest. Community depended on diverse occupation depended o the season. But most of them earn their livelihood thorough agriculture and Fishing. But after the severe affect of any disaster, they are struggling with their occupational status. They used to collect the wood, honey, leaf etc from the mangrove forest. Extraction of resource from the respective are is the main earning source. Shrimp farming is another important occupation, which is belongs to the higher class of the society. Middle and poor class forced to engage in as labor in the shrimp farming. Shrimp farming and the sea level rise due to Global Climate Change influencing the sea level rise and making difficult to cultivate rice. Women are very much vulnerable for the social structure and Changes in environment (Climate change) and its induced disaster bringing the sufferings more.


3.3 Identification and solution


3.3.1 Identification


  1. Poverty and Food Insecurity:


Poverty and food insecurity is widespread in the project areas. The situation aggravates after any disaster event. It was seen after AILA, more than two thirds of the population (67 percent) in four upazilas of Satkhira and Khulna districts (the areas worst affected by the cyclone) are originally poor, and consuming 2,122 kcal/person/day or less. More than half (55 percent) are extremely poor and food insecure, consuming 1,805 kcal/person/day or less.


The recent Poverty Estimates, calculated by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, WFP and World Bank, indicates that 58 percent of the population of Shayamnagar upazila of Satkhira district are extreme poor (below the lower poverty line), and that for Koyra upazila of Khulna district are 35 percent. The two major livelihoods in the affected areas, farming and fishing, suffered significant damage and loss due to continuous inundation of paddy fields and shrimp ghers/ fish ponds by saline water. Households were experienced severe shock as they entirely or partially lost their housing and productive assets of higher monetary value.


Again, the haor Basin is one of the poorest regions of Bangladesh. A number of studies have identified it as one of the ‘hot-spots’ of poverty in Bangladesh. Data on child malnutrition shows that the haor region is substantially worse off than Bangladesh, 55 percent children under-five being underweight as against 41 percent for Bangladesh as a whole.


  1. Unstable Livelihoods:


Agriculture and shrimp farming are the major areas of employment and livelihood in the selected upazilas. Around 85% people are employed in agriculture and landless farmers make up almost 66% of the population. The height of the sea level is increasing and consequently in many places the saline water from the Bay of Bengal is seeping into the land. The land and environmental degradation caused by this create serious problems for agriculture (i.e. severe soil degradation caused by erosion, contamination and compaction, losses of organic matter through improper farming practices, land transformation and deforestation). Water logging means that for long periods large areas of land cannot be used for agricultural production, significantly reducing employment opportunities in the region.


  1. Agriculture:


Due to the climate change and intrusion of sea water into the locality, salinity of soil and inland close water bodies has been increased. Normally it was also observed that there was no salinity impact on rice production due to high rainfall during monsoon season. But in the later part, when the rainfall ceases, it was assumed that soil salinity might increase and go beyond the safe limit of rice crop (4 dS/m). In some areas of the proposed upazilas, soil salinity level crossed the safe limit and increased up to 7-8 dS/m. Salinity grips nearly 80 percent villages under Koira upazila in Khulna district, causing persistent crisis of safe drinking water and extensive damage to arable lands, especially those producing paddy and vegetables. Due to high salinity following the onslaught of cyclone AILA on May 25 in 2009, paddy yield per bigha of land has come down to 8-10 maunds while it was 20-22 maunds earlier in Koira upazila, according to the Department of Agriculture Extension in Khulna. Salinity is gradually damaging fertility of land like slow poisoning due to infiltration of saline water due to collapse of 156 kilometres of embankments after AILA hit the coastal areas including Koira and Shayamnagar upazilas.


Agriculture is the principal profession of the Haor people. However, day-by-day the net cultivable land for agriculture is decreasing due to siltation through flooding. Therefore, people are forced to give up cultivation- their traditional and oldest profession, and struggle to find new employments.


The haor basin in north-eastern Bangladesh is subject to very peculiar conditions and suffers from extensive annual flooding. This makes livelihoods extremely vulnerable and limits the potential for agriculture production and rural enterprise growth. For 6 to 7 months of the year, the cropped land is completely inundated. Strong wave action adds to the vulnerability as it can potentially wash away the land and poses a major threat to many villages in the haor. Rural poor households have to depend upon fisheries and off-farm labour to supplement the meagre farm income. The common property nature of the water bodies or Jalmohals and the uncertain lease arrangements inhibits the full growth potential of the fisheries sector. The haors are known as an area of severe poverty and limited livelihood options with many people seasonally migrating to find work.


Again in the haor areas, there are lots of problems like river erosion and insufficient lands for people, frequent natural disaster especially the flood, cyclones and heavy monsoon, lack of adequate transport and communication, infrequent presence of Government Officials providing the essential services, lack of access to the common property such as the Jalmahal (water body), lack of government’s essential services especially in education, health, water and sanitation, communication, and agriculture and livestock and fisheries, lack of marketing facilities for the poor agriculture producers and fishermen, land grabbing by the influential, shortage of schools especially the girls’ school and lack of proper management of school, educational activities affected by flood and students are at risk during the flood and other natural disasters, destruction of biodiversity, lack of dredging of the rivers and canals, presence of dadan, a local form of money lending existing in agriculture and fisheries, lack of non-agriculture based employment opportunities, lack of adequate flood shelters etc.


  1. Drinking Water:


Safe limit of salinity for drinking water is 600 ppm. Intrusion of saline water due to storm surge accompanied with heavy rain fall inundation of ponds previously used for drinking water and salinity level of water crossed safe limit of drinking water. Crisis of safe drinking water is major problem in the areas. Women and girls, who are generally responsible for household water collection, have to travel long distance to fetch pure drinking water and they are either forced to travel 2-6 hours by boat or walk on foot to fetch fresh water. The people set out from home before sunrise every morning to fetch water from a deep tube-well, 18-20 kilometres away from their home even at Koyra Sadar. Many of the school going girls are engaged with household water collection instead of school enrolment. The dropout rate, therefore, has increased sharply in the study area after AILA. It is explored that the price of 20 litres of is Tk. 40. The most of the people cannot afford to buy a drum of 20 litres water for Tk 40. But water of these tube-wells has also become unfit for drinking due to excessive salinity and iron. Similar scenario is seen in many areas of Shayamnagar upazila.


In addition, there are few ground water aquifers in the areas due to a natural shortage of heavy sand particles beneath the ground. Because of the excessive extraction of ground water through deep tube well irrigation, aquifers of this area are often contaminated by arsenic and further affected by a decrease of the water level under the ground. Arsenic has now become a major problem in Shayamnagar upazila. According to the Groundwater Arsenic Calamity survey conducted by Uttaran, a local NGO, almost 79 percent of aquifers of the southwest coastal region are contaminated by arsenic.


  1. Sanitation:


Project area had a high coverage of latrines before the cyclone, a large number of which were heavily damaged by AILA. Still, the poorer strata of the society could not install sustainable latrines. After AILA, hygiene promotion efforts were found to be inadequate, inconsistent and irregular. The situation has not improved.



  1. Flooding and Water Logging:


The incessant heavy down pours of the rainy season causes flooding in the region. This water cannot be drained because of rising sea levels and the consequences of CEP, leaving vast areas water logged. Each year more thousands of hectares of land go under water for 6-8 months. The problem of stagnant water is gradually approaching down river to the south/coast as it follows the declining slopes of the river basin, spreading fast and inundating more areas. It is estimated that each year ten-twelve thousand hectares of land is becoming permanently waterlogged and the rate is rapidly increasing in these regions.


During heavy monsoon rains have stranded hundreds of thousands. A large number of villages in the region have been affected by floods. The poorest and the most vulnerable individuals in the project areas have to be homelessness and face a severe shortage of food. Flooding in these areas is a common phenomenon and the local communities believe the duration and depth of the floods is increasing cumulatively.


  1. Migration:


The coastal region of Bangladesh and the life and livelihoods of nearly 40 million people is extremely vulnerable to climate change impacts including rising sea level, reoccurring cyclones and increased salinity. Climate expert predicted that with the rise of sea level only one metre most of the coastal area of Bangladesh will be under water.  This area has seen two devastating cyclones, cyclone SIDR in 2007 and cyclone Aila in 2009. Nearly 200,000 people from the coastal district of Satkhira and Khulna were still living under open sky on the embankments as saline water inundates their homes even after two years of Cyclone Aila.


According to a recent study conducted by Department of Environment (DOE), recent disasters like Aila resulted into significant migration from the highly disaster prone areas of Satkhira and Khulna district. The study reveals that 20%, 18% and 15% families have already been migrated from Koyra, Dacope and Shyamnagar respectively. Most of them have migrated to Khulna, Satkhira, Bagerhat, Pirojpur, Borishal, Potuakhali, Gopalganj, Faridpur, Jessore and Narail.


A large number of families (about 10%) are living in the nearby city areas; but they temporarily return for getting relief, when it is distributed.The study reveals that from Koyra about 1200 families have permanently migrated, whereas from Dacope and Shyamnagar these numbers are about 800 and 1300 respectively. Most of people have migrated to Khulna, Satkhira, Rangamati, Dumuria, Doulatpur, Jessore and Kesobpur areas for looking jobs. Some people have also migrated to West Bengal of India in search of jobs. Whereas about 3000, 1500 and 1300 families have migrated temporarily from Shyamnagar, Koyra and Dacope respectively. The trend is continuing and every day 3 families are migrating to other areas.


The same trend has been observed in Sunamganj. Besides the common trends of family migration, the working male members are migrating to the capital city and the nearby ones temporarily and thus there create a social instability.


  1. Problems Related to Disaster Management:


The Government of Bangladesh has established a multi-layered institutional mechanism for disaster management, with formal recognition of the role of various stakeholders. Historically, NGOs and other informal support mechanisms in the country have also made significant contributions in disasters and during disaster recovery. Disaster managers have recognized this: Despite the presence of strengths such as long experience in disaster response and recovery, people’s resilience and donor support, management strategies have suffered from a host of policy and institutional weaknesses. Most prominent is the absence of a functioning partnership among the stakeholders within these formal set-ups. What is lacking is the development and embodiment of a culture of collective decision-making in planning, in resource sharing, and in implementing disaster management policies and programs in an integrated and transparent way.


Recently, the National Disaster Management Council (NDMC) and the Inter-Ministerial Disaster Management Coordination Committee (IMDMCC) developed National Disaster Management Act (NDMA). In theory, the policy framework on disaster management re-establishes multi-layered institutional mechanisms, with formal recognition of the role of various stakeholders from Ward to National levels. The new plan emphasizes a bottom up process which uses information compiled at grassroots level to inform the development of disaster management plans at Union, Upazilla, district levels. In practice, a huge disconnect exists between district level disaster management authorities, and ward level communities. In case of Upazila Disaster Management Committee (UzDMC), UNOs are appointed to chair local DMCs. However, they are also chairing numerous other committees and do not have the time nor the resources to proactively address Disaster Management issues in their regions. Rather, these DMCs are activated only during the response and recovery phases of local disasters. Therefore, the focus of the Upazila level DMCs has been on response rather than preparedness. A few of the leaders of Upazila level DMC are not aware of the Standing Order for DM drafted in 1997 and updated in 2010.


For response when their communities face extreme disaster situations, but Union level DMCs are not currently active. The leaders of Union Disaster Management Committee (UDMC) are not aware of any local DM plan. A few had heard of the Standing Orders for DM, and none of them had heard of the new NDMP strategy. Unanimously, the Union leaders agreed that developing plans at Ward level was the right way to proceed and claimed that they would support the validation of ward level plans and use them to inform the process of developing Union level DM plans. DMCs at ward and union level are needed to strengthen in order to build preparedness/relevant coping mechanisms.


The NDM Act states that the Disaster Management Bureau (DMB) will fill this gap by rendering assistance to Union and Upazila level disaster management committees and facilitate the process of developing these plans. However, the DMB does not currently possess the human, technical, or financial resources to conduct risk assessments or to prepare ground level plans. The new NDMP proposes to establish uniform CRA processes to ensure consistency in the conduct of community risk identification and compatibility with the risk reduction planning processes of the DMCs. However currently, there is no standard system.


Until the standard system is developed, and until the DMB has the capacity to implement the NDMP in the way it is proposed, the DMB have requested that organizations with the capacity to assess community hazards, vulnerabilities and risk, do so at Ward level in order to assist in the compilation of grassroots level hazard maps and contingency plans. As these plans are developed and validated, they will inform the development of Union level DM plans, Upazilla, District, so on and so forth. In order for the proposed bottom-up process of the NDMP to succeed, the DMB are largely dependent on organizations like HEED who are focusing on DRR at ward level.


  1. Inadequate Promotional Measures of Adaptive Crop Agriculture Including Innovative Farming Prac­tices in the Coastal Zone of Bangladesh:


Bangladesh is vulnerable to the potential impacts of climate change. The agriculture sector contributes a major share to the GDP of Bangladesh, which is about 30% and employs about 63% of the working force. Climate variability makes crop agriculture in Bangladesh highly vulnerable. Therefore, adaptation measures have to be looked at for the sustainability of agriculture. Recently CEGIS has conducted a study for Climate Change Cell (CCC) in partnership with BRRI, BARI, BARC and BUP to find out suitable adaptation measures that have the potential to help farmers adapt to climate changes and to identify suitable varieties of crops that would be able to adapt to climate change. From field experiments it was found that introduction of high yielding salt tolerant variety BRRI Dhan 47 could produce sustainable grain yield in the coastal regions.


It was also observed that there was no salinity impact on rice production due to high rainfall during monsoon season. Salt tolerant T. Aman varieties like BR23, BRRI Dhan 40 and BRRI Dhan 4l may be the solution to overcome salinity impact at the later stage. Tomato, Okra and Aroid were grown successfully under improved management practices with raised bed and mulch in the medium saline soils of Satkhira and Khulna. The existing cropping pattern of Fallow-T.Aman (Local) ­Fallow or Fallow-T.Aman (Local)-Boro (Local/HYV) may be replaced with the pattern of Kharif I- T. Aman-Boro or Kharif I-T.Aman-­Rabi. Numerous indigenous varieties of different crops are existed in the areas which are suitable to sustain in climate change situation and improved crop management can increase the productivity. In Koyra and Shayamnagar, farmers have some local practices that can be modified as improved version of technology to be adapted in changing situation have replicable effects. All these technologies are not promoted widely in all parts of the proposed upazilas.


  1. Tidal River Management (TRM): Peoples’ Way of Solving the Problem


IRB working closely with local implementing partners and communities to learn and successfully persuade the national and international policy makers to adopt indigenous water and river sedimentation management practices, which is named by water “experts” as Tidal River Management (TRM). To put is simply, TRM is effective management of river flow and sediment management to raise land level on low basins in the catchments areas of the rivers. TRM resulted in ecological restoration of rivers; has the potential to be replicated in hundreds of beels in the region, and perhaps, in tropical deltaic regions in other countries as well. TRM approach appears to be highly acceptable among the key stakeholders and the cost of implementation is rather low compared to many other coastal development projects (EGIS, 2002).


Although, TRM and peoples’ involvement in water management have been recognised within the highest policy level; nexus of the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB), contractors and political rent seekers continued their traditional water management. It is widely accepted that governance and institutional issues of “structural water management” are at the core of the difficulties. BWDB appears less interested adopting the TRM approach as it reduces corruption and increase accountability to the community. Till date, only two TRM projects had been completed by the BWDB; and these projects also did not compensate farmer who lost their land by the project because of the cumbersome bureaucratic procedure. The current compensation processes also do not considered the loss of landless peoples’ livelihood let alone the gender dimension of the project implementation and compensation.


  1. Comprehensive and integrated measures to address problems


With the problems noted above, there needs to be a comprehensive integrated approach that can address the vulnerabilities of the people of the target areas especially in the field of climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and livelihood promotion. Creating some good evidences at the community level, making the way for those to be replicable and to be up-scaled are the key necessary things for the country now. Climate change adaptation or even disaster risk reduction are not stand alone issue rather, these have been integral parts of people’s lives now-a-days.


Now it is important that we promote the adaptive activities that exists in the community level, innovate some effective adaptive measures and pilot those, reduce the disaster risk factors, promote some preparedness measures and small scale mitigation, creating income opportunities at the community level etc. should come together for ensuring greater and comprehensive benefit for the vulnerable communities of Bangladesh.


3.3.2 Proposed Solution


Poor and marginalized people’s hurdle towards disasters has never been greater in Bangladesh. While average number of people killed and affected by disaster has fallen in long run, this remains more than 50 million people in every five years from 1986 to 2007. The economic cost associated with disaster has been increasing with significant burden on HH and local economy. “At least 8 million houses were destroyed each year by disaster during 1970 to 2007. The disaster problem has further been exacerbated by the impact of climate change” (EU Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction in Developing Country, by the European Commission, Thematic issues- sustainable management of natural resources, in 2008). The scientific predication and people’s experience clearly identify that nature and impact of disaster is changing in Bangladesh.

Development does not automatically protect poor people from the consequences of hazards. Bangladesh has achieved stable economic growth over last few decades. Significant achievement has also been made in human development. In disaster management, notable improvement in some critical areas such as public health awareness, early warning, infrastructure, communication, and community based preparedness and institutional strengthening helped minimizing disaster related death. Bangladesh has invested 10 million taka on its own to build cyclone shelters and created storm early- warning system. 50 million USD was allocated to agriculture and health to help climate proof some crucial sectors. In the past two decades more research has been carried out on mitigation than on adaptation. However, more effort is now being put into adaptation research, and this thematic issue presents a selection of recent highlights, including making the best use of indigenous adaptation and new technology for mitigation. In that perspective IR within its experience will address the issues related to climate change and understand that local efforts are a must to overcome those predicted effects of climate change. The objective of IR is to serve most the most vulnerable- the poor- to help them mitigate and adapt to the climate change situation.


A call for climate proof


A report in the Guardian said about Bangladesh « People of one of the poorest and most vulnerable and yet resilient and innovative countries transform it from being the world’s most famously vulnerable country being recognized as perhaps the most adaptive country ».


IRB is willing to contribute to make this country as the most adaptive country starting from the targeted areas to be promoted as model villages. Keeping previous experience of IR in mind, although this operation will cover a much smaller geographical area and will focus more on developing and strengthening the existing coping and preparedness capacities of the communities and institutions as to offer sustainable solutions. IRB is confident on offering a set of activities that are integrated and vulnerable inclusive. The activities will consider and integrate everyday community problems and hazards including basic health care, water and sanitation, livelihood into the climate change work. The project aims to implement activities with the collective involvement of beneficiaries and local institutions (UDMC) in order to ensure sustainability. IRB sees within this project the opportunity to build a sustainable climate change culture which is vulnerable inclusive through:


The action researches are one of the main pillars of this project as the researches will lessen the vulnerability of the beneficiaries in the targeted areas and will then allow adaptation strategy to change conditions. Rehabilitation and/or building of climate adaptive infrastructures is the main hard activities that IR will implemented to mitigate infrastructures and thus to reduce the loss in this area while a disaster occur. In the meantime IR will pay a special focus to train the community on how to maintain those infrastructures and how to increase the efficiency of the EWS in those areas.


Advocacy Plan with targeted thematic areas will be undertaken through extensive campaign. The purpose is to raise awareness on climate change and promote evidence in the field to influence national and global level approaches and policy frameworks. It will help other programme departments in the organsiation to replicate and incorporate the learning into the future planning.



The project will use the People’s Plan of Action for River Management to understand the risk requires investment in scientific, technical, and institutional capabilities to observe, record, research, analyse, forecast, model and map natural hazards. Technical and collaborative partnership will be built with scientific institutions i.e. CEGIS. Other important area of the project is capacity building to strengthen communities and Disaster Management Committees at local and national levels. This is designed to develop and operationalize the community risk reduction planning process by way of facilitating the undertaking of mitigation initiatives at the community level. During the early stages of the project, the community risk reduction initiatives will be identified as a result of the CRA and planning process. A concentrated effort for more direct programming at the community level will be linked to the formal hazard analysis outputs of the project. Thus the project will address the HFA guidance of knowing the risks that the communities face, and take actions based on that knowledge.


4. Stakeholder Analysis


The extremely poor in the climate change influenced and disaster prone areas bear the heaviest burden in terms of livelihoods lost as they possess limited resources to deal with the risks they face. They will be important target groups. Personnel of community level platforms, local government institutes (LGIs), legally organized bodies, government agencies and civil society organizations are also stakeholders of this project.


4.1 Primary Stakeholders:


The extremely poor in the proposed climate change influenced and disaster prone areas bear the heaviest burden in terms of livelihoods lost as they possess limited resources to deal with the risks they face. The Children, women & men from poor and hardcore poor families, landless, religio-ethnic minorities, disaster victims and disabled people of these geographically isolated areas are the primary stakeholders of the project.


The following communities will be the primary stakeholders of the action:

  1. Those who are living in acutely water logged, perennial cyclone and flood zones of the selected four areas

  2. Landless households and bastis (rural based slums) with minimum assets, irregular employment, and limited income generating activities;

  3. Deserted women, their children, ethnic minorities and persons with disabilities.


Following table presents a summary digest of the key characteristics of the different groups.


Stakeholder group

Critical Issues

Community people/households marginalised and vulnerable to disaster risks

Asset-less male & female headed households

i.e. no homestead

sharecropper/rearer,

temporary migration — seasonal and daily,

Mainly dependent on day/wage labour and experience acute food shortage.

  • Chronic and persistent ill-health affecting capacity to work

  • Lack of physical security/ fear of theft & robbery

  • Women in male HH likely to seasonally migrate but receive lower wages than men

  • Women commonly report domestic violence during crisis situations.

  • Depending on homestead location subject to regular inundation and thus dependent on landowners for access to homestead/sharecropping land.

Women and child headed households : De jure and de facto without male protection

As above and including:

  • Highly vulnerable to physical, sexual and verbal harassment

  • Already constrained mobility further compromised due to absence of males/adults.

  • No male representative means doubly excluded from local support systems.

Communities on or outside embankment.

As above and including:

  • Whilst linked to government support, other service provision often minimal.

Adolescent girls

  • Highly vulnerable to physical, sexual and verbal harassment

  • Low social status – considered burden because of dowry obligations

  • Age and gender act to exclude girls from community level decision-making processes.

Elderly People and disables with no family support

  • excluded from most early warning and other information, decision-making networks

  • extreme food insecurity

  • dependent on charity and/or relief

Ethnic communities and other vulnerable groups

  • Low status work taken up only by poorest households

  • Heavily dependent on maintaining exploitative patron/client relationships for access to river/khas ponds and essential equipment.

  • Some time extremely abused i.e. untouchables.


The following communities will be the secondary stakeholders of the action:


Tertiary Stakeholder:


The potential tertiary stakeholders of the project are, Network of NGOs, small NGOs, local administration and Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB), Development partners and National politicians, government and local government bodies, concerned ministries etc. Besides, ARCAB with its 10 international NGOs, national and global climate communities, and academicians would be involved.


The project (detailed description of what would be in the logical framework


The Project is designed with the input of stakeholders and project participants to increase disaster resilience through social mobilisation and empowering the poor and marginalised communities in the South-western Bangladesh and ultimately contribute to their poverty reduction in a sustainable way. In designing the project and then checking the logical connections between planned activities and intended results, standard project logical framework template is used to set the logical linkage among the goal, purpose and objectives. A project monitoring and evaluation framework elaborated with SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic & Time bound) indicators has been developed.


General Description and Overview


The Super Goal of the project is to contribute in achieving the targets of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of the government of Bangladesh in the face of increased natural disasters and climate change. It will contribute to the National Plan for Disaster Management (NPDM) 2010-2015 and also to the National Water Management Plan (NWMP).


The proposed project will contribute to reduction in poverty and inequality through building community resilience to natural disasters which will ultimately reduce loss and increase human productivity. This will be achieved through increased capacity of communities in the face of disaster and community risk in the South-western region of Bangladesh. The project activities will directly contribute in reducing the risks of hazards in the region through advocating for a sustainable solution of the root-causes of disasters.


The project will focus on capacity building of grass root organisations of the poor, their awareness of the vulnerabilities including potential risk and impact of natural disaster and climate change. Their organisational capacity, networks for advocacy and local early warning system will be supported. Community mobilisation will be undertaken for structural mitigation at community level to make the DRR a culture. This approach is closely related to the concept and objectives of HFA which is “Use knowledge, innovation and education to build a culture of safety and resilience at all levels”.


This project was designed in consultation with the target communities, LGI and local administration and Panni committees in the implementation districts. It is built on earlier experiences and lessons learnt, especially the Peoples Plan of Action for River Management in South-western Region. Besides, ARCAB and other research partners will be aligned for action research component of the project. They will be involved in research on developing sustainable disaster risk reduction and adaptation approaches and methodologies, scaling up and scaling out the methodologies, and measuring CBA component using its participatory monitoring and evaluation tool.


The project will be implemented with a rights based approach of development. Poor and marginalised peoples’ rights and demand for safe life and livelihoods including participation in the issues that affect their lives i.e. river management will be focused through social mobilisation, solidarity building and knowledge management. The project integrates crosscutting issues like gender, environment, governance and poverty, has a multi-stakeholder focus and promotes linking and learning.


Impact (including indicators)


The project will contribute directly to the progress of the country towards all major development and resilience framework and strategies in place at global and national level. It is very difficult to estimate as multiple factors are in place, but specific measures will be taken in close collaboration of the national government, mandated organisations, dedicated project teams and other relevant stakeholders in this regard. This can be measured by the number of policy and programme related measures taken in joint partnership with the Government of Bangladesh at national level. At local level partnerships with the administrative functions on climate and disaster risk management will be established and their capacity to leverage at least 10 % increase in climate adaptive financing will be ensured at the end of the project period.


Impact Indicators:


Outcomes (including indicators): Reduce the negative impact of climate change and conflict with sustainable improvements in disaster risk reduction, food security and resilience in marginalised communities in six countries of extreme vulnerability


Indicators:



Outputs (including indicators)


Output 1: Improved rural livelihood strategies of the vulnerable communities through introduction of climate adaptive livelihood measures and capacity building towards predicted conditions of climate change


Indicators:



Output 2: Improved policy and institutional arrangements to plan and deliver climate resilient development approaches at local level (Institutional strengthening)


Indicators:



Output 3: Build capacities of DMCs, community organisations and partners to effectively respond to disasters and implement inclusive and innovative community based climate change adaptation and mitigation


Indicators:



Output 4: Enhanced sharing, learning and reflection on practical experience and good models of climate change mitigation and adaptation for integration at local, national and global level

Indicators:


Enhanced sharing, learning and reflection on practical experience and good models of climate change mitigation and adaptation for integration at local, national and global level


5. Beneficiary Analysis


Identification (including selection criteria)


The proposed project area is highly vulnerable to the climate change and disaster related risks. Due to climate change and attacks of two consequent super cyclones and floods, the targeted areas has lost huge bio-diversity resources. Traditional livelihood options are not able meet food security needs of poor people. No integrated initiatives are undertaken neither by the government nor the non-governmental organizations. As a result of these, poverty situation is decreasing and people are forced to migrate in search of better livelihood.


The project will directly work with 16,400 households or 78,000 persons living in the most vulnerable and disaster-prone areas of Bangladesh; however the benefits will gradually encompass a larger portion of the total local community. These beneficiary figures are on the higher side because of the mass awareness activities planned under information, education and communication and local disaster management sector.


Note: The total number of direct beneficiaries reflected here are not similar to the sum of beneficiaries under four results. We have considered the overlap factor while presenting final figures here.


Status and Specificities of direct beneficiaries:


The project will target local communities as well as institutions as target beneficiaries. At the national level, two Government Ministries will be targeted under the proposed intervention; namely the Ministries of Environment and Ministry of Food and Disaster Management. Target institutions at the local level include school, CBOs and local level governance structures such as the union Parishads, Upazila Parishads, DMCs and SMCs.


The direct beneficiaries are those communities and institutions in geographic areas targeted due to their extreme vulnerability to floods and/ or cyclones and other adverse impacts of climate change. In these areas, special consideration has been given to socially excluded and marginalised community members who are most vulnerable to disasters. The proposed intervention has targeted women, children, PWDs and the elderly and will ensure the inclusion of these socially excluded groups and their mainstreaming throughout disaster planning and management.


The project recognises the importance of institutional strengthening in enabling a sustainable resilience intervention. The project specifically targets institutions as direct beneficiaries. Accordingly, local governance structures such as DMCs will be strengthened, along with CBOs, schools, local government institutions (LGI) female elected members, journalists, NGO works, teachers, members of civil society, members of local administration and local leaders. In order to achieve disaster resilience in Bangladesh, a holistic and integrated approach is required which targets communities and institutions as direct beneficiaries; such is the strategy of this project.


Beneficiary Selection Criteria:


Community based detection approach will be followed in selection of the beneficiary. In this approach community people will select real beneficiaries under the facilitation of the project staff. In this regard, the most vulnerable people in terms of poverty and disasters will be selected as the primary stakeholders. These people will be with the central role in further planning and implementing the project. Even through the Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation (PM&E) approach, they community people will be empowered enough to monitor the progress and process of the activities. They will take part in the evaluation process and thus contribute significantly to the proper implementation of the project.



Direct (persons)

Indirect (persons)

Direct (persons)

Male

Female

Children

78,800

36,445

38612

40,188

40,976


  1. Implementation Methodology


It is proposed that the project draws on the learning from the success, however new programme strategy will intensify the participation of stakeholders in the implementation of project activities and empower communities, local government, and CBO institutions to achieve the objectives of the project. The overall programme strategy is characterised by:


  1. IRB country office will assume a facilitation role, working through field offices while building the capacity and community and LGIs in order to sustain development implementation activities


IRB with its local offices and staffs will take the lead role in planning, overall management, monitoring, reporting and capacity building interventions of the project, however, will ensure that stakeholders are involved in planning and lesson learning activities at all levels. IRB brings a wealth of experience in the management and implementation of large scale programmes in the range of technical areas that this project includes.

IRB will also promote strategic alliances and linkages with other actors around several specific issues and activities, including:



The various target groups will be involved in all programme activities. The activities are specifically designed for ultimate impact in the lives of the most marginalised and vulnerable households in the south-west Bangladesh. However, the methodology is designed to build ownership among communities, and hence community members will be able to contribute to the evolution of project strategies. Other key stakeholders include the emergent leaders within communities with pro-poor agendas and the aptitude and interest to exercise leadership and coordinate economic development activities, and local government officials. Their role in the project is as motivators, facilitators and problem solvers and they will help coordinate and support group activities that facilitate pro-poor development action.


  1. Empowerment and active participation of the poor, in particular women, through community based organisations


Due to imbalances in power, the extreme poor households, and women in particular, have limited access to information, resources and their participation in the decision making processes. Throughout IRB’s 27 years of experience in working with CBOs, it has been evident that CBOs are not only successful managers of their risks but that they are also extremely effective in advocacy and networking to mobilise local resources from government and NGOs, according to their rights and locally determined development priorities. For the participants, primarily women, the experience of developing their own successful businesses and participating in community leadership positions has contributed significantly to their empowerment. Women’s active participation in groups and CBOs has not only empowered them socially, but also helped them to increase their political role.


  1. Developing Social and Human Capital


The project methodology involves a range of initiatives building social and human capital through social mobilisation, where the project, while targeting the hardcore poor families, works with the entire community and other stakeholders in building relationships of solidarity and support for improved development outcomes. Analysis is done jointly with communities to identify the poorest people, and to explore the dynamics of risk and hazard, food insecurity and other vulnerabilities. Beyond social mobilisation work, individual women will also be supported with inputs and support to improve their incomes (through training and asset transfers to support the start up of IGA and cash for conservation opportunities) and engage in markets for long term sustainability.


  1. Focus on addressing the root causes


In order to have sustainable impact on their risk reduction and livelihood, the project activities address the underlying causes of vulnerabilities. IRB has determined that unmet needs, lack of alternative livelihood options, vulnerabilities, powerlessness, exclusion and denial of participation in the water & river management are key underlying causes vulnerabilities of the target population. These causes are exacerbated for women in the poorest families by women’s low position in society driven by masculine-oriented power structures, patriarchal socialization, and marginalisation of girls and women. While, recurrent disasters cause frequent depletion of assets reinforce the cycle of poverty for them and their dependents. It is therefore important that the methodology employed by programs not only puts assets and common resources in their hands, but also nurtures the skills and capacity of the vulnerable communities and addresses the issue by adapting to the irreversible change.


  1. To recognize the potentiality of the community to address Climate Change effects


IRW acknowledge the potentiality of the community to be “ change agent”, that is why there is a crucial need to document their knowledge and to develop an approach that could be a replicable model on how to address communities towards Climate Change effects. Since the emerging effect of climate change is very slow and unforeseen, it is very important to document the actual ground level realities. Also the effects of climate change will not be an end to itself. While having separate effects on livelihood and environment, these two factors will affect each other is a robust way. How then the communities would be able to face these shocking effects and to what extent the indigenous knowledge can be replicated for intervention work is the key point of focus of IR WW.

  1. To recognize the role of women and to increase gender consideration on Climate Change management


“Women due to their social rules, discrimination and poverty will be affected possibly at higher level by the effects of climate change” The third IPCC report (2001)


IRW understands that women especially in the rural areas play a major role in natural resource management and especially during and after a disaster. It is then important to involve women into Climate Change management and to develop approach that includes a gender consideration. IR will in that perspective conducts active research that will enable advocacy on different levels on women capacity to be a “change agent”.


Advocacy: In order to ensure that those change agents are acknowledged, IR will mainstream Climate Change in the local and national media.


Knowledge Transfer: Although, most of the impacts of climate change are taking place in the rural coastal areas of Bangladesh, the root cause of such occurrence is certainly these place. Hence significant level of knowledge transfer is need from the ‘affected population’ to the ‘causing population’. This will include sensitization among the various actors of climate change and actual interaction among them. Since behaviour communication is a long process, proper knowledge dissemination and sharing is a key tool addressing climate change.


Apprehension aspects

The effect of climate change is there but it is necessary for the primary stakeholders to realize this growing notion. When lives have already been exacerbated by various natural calamities in the proposed project areas, it might be difficult for them to separate the actual impacts of climate change. Hence, the communities should be addressed in proper manner with the replication of indigenous knowledge and scientific truths and develop innovative ways to cope with it.


  1. Advocacy, Coordination and Networking at local and national level


The project will promote advocacy at the national as well as local level for changes in policy interpretation and implementation in support of currently powerless extreme poor households and communities. IRB will promote coalition local community based organisations, civil society organizations, NGOs, IRB led NGO Network for advocacy and campaign for coastal natural resource conservation and national government bodies. Lessons learnt and experiences from implementation of activities by all partner institutions, including the action research will feed into local, national and international advocacy initiatives to inform and contribute to policy development, in particular in areas related to the risk environment in South-western Bangladesh. Policy makers and implementers will be major audiences of advocacy.


  1. Apply learning and innovation


A strong emphasis will be given on applying, generating, and sharing lessons learnt and experiences from this action and also previous and current IRB projects. As the proposed program is developing a set of innovations on CALO and disaster risk management, it would generate a number of learning papers through the range of action research and scoping studies. The M&E system will support learning and innovation to be captured and information generated will also be instrumental to making decisions on the implementation strategy of the action. Close links will be made to IRB’s other livelihoods and DRR projects to share experiences and foster collaboration. Working through various network and Forums will also be crucial for the promotion and application of lessons learnt from other projects within and outside IRB to inform and more effectively effect change in programming strategy.


  1. Gender Equality and Diversity:


I PROJECT PROPOSAL 1 PROJECT SUMMARY PROJECT NAME PROMOTING CLIMATE RB is committed to actively promote gender equality within its programming, and has a formal gender and diversity policy that guides both programming and organisational practice. Women and children are the most vulnerable in the face of climate change and disaster events. IRB will address their needs as a priority in line with its policies and ethos. Equality will be promoted in the program through staff selection and orientation to programme staff, community groups and leaders. CRA will ensure participation of women and other vulnerable members of the community and action planning will addresses risks specific to the most vulnerable groups and undertake program through the CBOs to collectively achieve them. In Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) related activities, training on CALO technology and CALO implementation, participation of women will be ensured by the project.


  1. Capacity building


This is an important approach as weak technical and management capacities of UPs, CBOs, Civil Societies and other public and private services providers is one of the reasons for the present state of risks in the target areas. However, capacity building efforts will go beyond transmitting technical and management capacities, and seek to induce attitudinal changes among key stakeholders to capacitate their CBOs leadership with a collective approach.


  1. Community based approach


In implementing the project, community based participatory approach will be followed, where community will play the key role. Specifically the project beneficiaries as the part of community will perform the central role in entire implementation process of the project. The community action groups will be organized and managed by community people. The community people will be provided with back-up support by IRB project office in collaboration with community action group. The Field Organizer recruited by the Community people from the community will facilitate and assist the community action groups as well as the project beneficiaries to handle their activities. The community action groups will be responsible for ensuring the participation of all segments of the community is implementing the project through meaningful representation of the women, adolescent girls, boys and children in the committee. Participation of local level institutions like CBO, UPs and GoB departments, in executing the project, will also be ensured.


  1. Sustainability


The proposed project builds on ongoing risk reduction and climate adaptation programmes implemented by Islamic Relief and implementing partner in Bangladesh. Through the experience of these projects a high level of sustainability is envisaged as long as the overall project activities are not overambitious or demanding. Keeping previous experience in mind, this operation will cover a much smaller geographical area and will focus more on developing and strengthening the existing coping and adaptation capacities of the communities and institutions. The activities will consider and integrate everyday community problems and hazards including basic health care, and water and sanitation into the climate adaptation work. The project aims to implement the activities with the collective involvement of beneficiaries in order to ensure sustainability.


The project will sustain beyond the completion of its three year life time in terms of institutions, financial and policy aspects. In terms of institutional aspect, it will be sustainable. The project has been designed to build sustainability through process of capacity building for the grass-root level Primary Organisations and their Apex Federations, CBOs and Paani Committees. Community people will improve their knowledge on DRR and climate change issues and change attitude and practices ensuring increased resilience and adaptability to disaster and climatic risks. Over the next 36 months, the project will expand its approaches to address the rights of participation on water management, climate change and disaster management issues, with support from CBOs, grass organisations, civil society and media, and build greater public engagement with the service providers for a sustainable solution risk reduction. Focusing on empower communities through an integrated approach to rights based programming by providing community members with the capacity and knowledge they need to ensure safety of their life and livelihood in the face of natural disasters and facilitating linkages among donor, government and community activities to deepen impact and sustainability.


Thus the key sustainability strategies and approaches of the projects includes i) human capacity building through training and awareness of the citizens, iii) Organisational capacity building of Paani Committee and iii) building network and partnership. All methods and models being proposed have been tested and found to be effective and sustainable. Uttaran has built sustainability into the project through processes of capacity building for those who have been marginalized in the past, and those responsible for providing services to the vulnerable, together with survival support for the individual households who are victim of disasters and climatic risk.


Impacts on peoples’ awareness of CRA, CALO, Peoples’ Plan of Action, are likely to persist beyond the period of support. Paani Committees and Forum will attain autonomy and self-reliance however, they will need support and unrealistic sustainability criteria would be counter-productive; groups will need to work hard to gain community trust, and voluntary contributions to functioning; need for longer-term sustainability will be raised early within Paani Committees. To continue their work beyond project period, these committees will develop partnership and networks with Songjog Network (a network of 40 local NGOs working in the region), CEGIS, IWM, major political parties and media working in the region.


Using the enhanced knowledge and awareness on various issues of climate change and disaster management, community actors will be able to make sustainable all Primary Organisations and their Apex Federations, Songjog Network, CBOs and Paani Committees. IRB will transform the project as program and align it under its program division. A small team of skilled personnel will be formed to look after the project activities.


Union Parishad (UP), Upazilla Parishad (UzP) and District Parishad (DP) will participate in the project events and will positively be aware about the significance of the project on the socio-ecology and economic life of the people. They will own the project and contribute a lot to sustainably implementation of the project. Through implementation of this project, an equitable and mutual understanding and sustainable relationship among stakeholders will be developed. IRB will work closely with its local partners and networks to ensure the effective and sustainable delivery of efforts. ARCAB will be working for long time with their innovative PM&E method, and will periodically be measuring and monitoring the project impacts on the beneficiaries.


A detailed sustainability and exit plan will be developed in consultation with the stakeholders during implementation of the project. IRB will design an exit strategy founded on creating confidence and experience among group members and the community people so that the community and civil society groups can independently plan; access relevant information; implement group initiatives; and access entitlements from government service providers. There will be a gradual decrease in Uttaran-led activities over time and benchmarks will be established to monitor capacity development. Plans will focus on assuring effective handover of responsibilities while ensuring requirements for accounting for all resources transferred during the project by IRW are satisfied.


The following are the other key areas that will be considered within implementation strategy:


  1. Continuum Strategy


Islamic Relief recognizes the need to integrate climate adaptation into its other ongoing projects/ programmes so that the impact of the climate induced risks is reduced and has less effect on livelihoods. Integration and mainstreaming is recognised as one of the strategic objectives of Islamic Relief’s International and Country level strategy papers. Islamic Relief Bangladesh will continue to strive for collaboration with other partners to ensure that disaster risk reduction is a local and national priority and that successful pilot initiatives carried out under Climate Change Fund (CCF) are included into long term planning and other programmes.

 

The project activities would like to establish an effective community mobilization which would provide a base to mainstream climate adaptation efforts with other important sectors and phases of humanitarian and development programmes. The important part will be sharing a vision around the issues faced by the community to ensure their ownership and work in collaboration. The project design in particular capacity building and awareness raising activities will strive towards linking and mainstreaming these measures by selecting various themes on water and sanitation, education and health etc.


Islamic Relief will work in close coordination with the local structures such as Union Disaster Management Committees to further strengthen and integrate them into emergency and developmental programmes. Replication and cost effectiveness will be specifically addressed in the design of the structural activities in order to promote feasible management beyond the project period and acceptance and ownership among the local population. The transfer of disaster preparedness and climate adaptation related knowledge and skills into the community will be integrated into all emergency and developmental programmes. Specific capacity building measures and initial support will go to the DMC structures across all levels, in order to ensure the institutional arrangements for climate adaptation to remain active beyond the project period. Measures like opening bank account and facilitating the process to raise funds for the UDMCs through local government annual development plan, CDMP and Bangladesh Climate Resilience Funds would ensure their continuation of services beyond the project driven interventions.

 

Structural as well as non-structural adaptation activities in this project will strengthen people’s capacities to reduce their vulnerabilities of living in an unsafe location. The proposed activities will ensure that the communities are organized in various community groups, and in case of any disaster, where assistance is needed it will be received in a timely manner, and of better quality and in accordance to their needs. In this way, the cost of assistance will be lower for these organized communities.

 

Development of effective linkages will be addressed as a key strategic area to sustain the project initiatives beyond the project period. Islamic Relief will ensure that the project activities are undertaken in accordance with effective coordination with the local actors of development so as to link the project with ongoing development in the area. For this purpose, formal partnerships will be established with union and ward level disaster management committees which form an integral part of the Bangladesh’s disaster management structure recognised under Standing Order for Disasters (SoDs).


The project will ensure that all other community volunteer groups established under the project will be effectively linked and work together on regular basis. The project will also develop linkages of these groups with different department of the Government of Bangladesh (Civil service providers like fire brigade etc, Bangladesh Red Crescent Society (BDRCS) and other private institutions). Partnership with ARCAB and other research institutes would diversify and add quality to the project component.

 

Lessons learned from the project especially on cyclone and flood preparedness and mitigation will be documented and mainstreamed into organizational and community level practices within other existing projects of Islamic Relief.


PROJECT PROPOSAL 1 PROJECT SUMMARY PROJECT NAME PROMOTING CLIMATE


These steps to ensure the handing over to the communities are inherent to the approach of IR.


The involvement of communities and local institution and media will increase the existing sense of responsibility of the civil society and will increase their capacity to be change agents into this climate change endeavour.


  1.  Mainstreaming or Replication/Multiplier Effects of the Project


It has been described earlier that a lot of outputs /results will be produced through implementation of the project. As the project will be implemented within 10 unions of 04 Upazilas in Bangladesh, it will be necessary to replicate the knowledge, experiences, learning and other outputs to other parts of the country having similar disheartening situation. Through this replication process, the outputs of the projects will be disseminated to the beneficiaries of other part of the country. As a result, the whole climate vulnerable and disaster prone areas of the country will have the scope to have increased access to climate change friendly alternative livelihood development and DRR services. As ultimate result, the contribution of the project will be increased to overall socio-economic development of the country.


As IRB is a capable nongovernmental organization and members of different regional and national networks to handle such activities in all over the country, after the completion of the project period it will take an effective measure to replicate the outcomes of the project. The specific action will taken to replicate the outcomes include continuation of advocacy, campaign and monitoring process in the existing project area, promoting the approach to the new area through directly by IRB or by other NGOs, organizing replication workshops, experience sharing meeting with different levels of stakeholders, organizing consultation meeting with the relevant government officials.


7. Detailed description of activities and implementation strategies per outcome


7.1 Improved rural livelihood strategies of the vulnerable communities through introduction of climate adaptive livelihood measures and capacity building towards predicted conditions of climate change


      1. Adaptive livelihood analysis and planning at community level and household level


Due to the change in climatic pattern and increase of salinity, the livelihood patterns of the proposed project area have already been changed and people have very limited scope of their livelihood security. The project will facilitate to find out the livelihood options those are being practiced by community for adapting to the negative effects of salinity. Using PRA tools (FGD, livelihood mapping, seasonal crop calendar, resource mapping etc.) existing practices of livelihood and potential adaptable livelihood options will be identified. In the planning, they will identify the source of technical resources and their ways assessing technical support. Livelihood analysis will be conducted in 99 wards in the four project areas. The outcome of these analytical sessions will be development of a livelihood plan with the purpose to spread adaptive livelihood techniques at wider scale. These livelihood action plans will be displayed at the community level.


      1. Promote CALO-Climate Adaptive Livelihood Options


Most vulnerable families will be targeted to receive climate adaptive livelihood technologies and initial support. The proposed options and number of targeted households tentatively specified through initial field assessment and survey can be further revised after the livelihood analysis is completed. Following is the primary plan for the support areas:


      1. Value chain analysis and market promotion


In the process of value chain analysis, focus group discussion will be conducted at community level to identify 2-3 most promising sub-sectors. Considering initial field assessment, it is assumed that crab cultivation/fattening and mat production have the best potential in the proposed areas. In the sub-sector analysis, the project will arrange consultation with primary producers, retailers, service providers, mid level buyers, big buyers, exporters etc. This analysis will give scope of work and value addition for particular production where small scale producers will be benefited. Based on the findings of value chain analysis, the project will facilitate stimulation of the market actors of selected sub-sectors through consultation and interaction meeting. The process will reduce layer of supply chain and add value to the price for the producers. The analysis will also focus to assess the environmental impact of all the identified options.


      1. Formation and strengthening producer group


After selection and value chain analysis of sub-sectors, producer groups will be formed with 20-25 producers in each. One or more group (s) will be formed in each village. Tentatively 40 producer groups will be formed across the project areas. The producer groups will function under an umbrella of CBO. There will be an executive committee (consisting of the chairman, secretary, and treasurer) in each producer group which will lead the functional activities of the group. Project staff will provide facilitation support to conduct monthly meetings of these groups. Each group will develop their plan of actions to improve quality of the production and value addition. Project will be providing technical assistance and linkage building support continuously. 440 producer group leaders will be provided training on group management, market promotion for organization and functioning of their production intervention smoothly. Besides, 44 producer group leaders will take part in exposure visit to generate practical knowledge and enhance linkage with market actors and service providers.


      1. Saline tolerant crop and vegetable cultivation


In the target areas, saline intrusion into the agricultural land and homesteads has compelled small holder farmers to cease their agricultural activities. Most of the existing crop varieties are not being able to adapt to this change in the geo-physical conditions. The proposed project will assist the vulnerable households through promotion and provision of saline tolerant seed varieties for crop/vegetable diversification, promote climate adaptive agriculture technology and crop variety. “Deviant Farmers” will be identified and supported so that others can learn and replicate good practices. 600 smallholder farmers will be provided with agricultural input support (seed, inputs, materials, techniques) for promotion of saline tolerant crop and vegetable cultivation. The same number of farmers will be provided with skill training on crop and vegetable cultivation techniques. External facilitators and expert farmers from the same community will demonstrate practical training sessions.


      1. Saline tolerant tree plantation (fruits and wood)


It has been observed that unused and underutilised land exists in the homesteads and their surroundings. These unused lands will be used for plantation of saline tolerant varieties for augmenting present income of the farmers and will also help in improving environments, for example, large quantities of CFC gases coming out will be absorbed and oxygen will be released in the atmosphere by the proposed plantation.

  
Besides, large quantities of fruits and bio fuel will be used by the poverty stricken families to a large extent.  The saplings will be planted in special pits, full of organic fertilizers and less saline contents. A total of 600 households will get sapling, plantation, and materials support. The project will provide skill training for same number of participants on plantation and management techniques of fruit and timber tree.


Within few years, benefits can be attained from fruit trees that will contribute as additional household income. Also, quick growing timber trees will be valuable asset within 3-5 years period. Also substantial ownership and rural employment would be created during the process of plantation work.


      1. Reed and mat production


Traditionally, the people living surrounding Sundarbans are producing different cottage products using the resources extracting from Sundarbans. Reed and mat production is currently emerging. They are doing it as their supplementary income generation activity. Women are directly engaged in production of mat. Although, there is huge market demand of mat but they are not able to increase their volume of production due to capital deficit. Also, quality of their production is very traditional in design and no additional items are being produced. The project will provide capital support for reed plant (raw material of mat production) cultivation and mat production. A total of 100 households will get this support including 10 days long skill training for quality improvement/value addition and market linkage development.


      1. Fish cultivation


The South-western part of Bangladesh is a place of hundreds natural depression. Generally it was habitat of many indigenous fresh water fishes. Previously community at large especially the fisher folk and poor people were maintaining at least fifty per cent of their livelihood through fishing. But, in the recent years, these oxbow lakes do not have enough fishes because of over harvesting and use of pesticide. Because of poor drainage system, many oxbow lakes are now under water and more than six to seven months there is no opportunity for cultivation. In the dry season, the community people often go for dewatering the lakes for maximizing the catch, totally ignoring the aftermath of this type of unwise over exploitation. In this way the conservation of the brood of different species is violated, therefore many of the species are already on the verge of extinction from the wetlands.


The project proposes to restore indigenous fishes to mitigate the income loss during water logging period and meet the protein requirements of the hardcore poor. In the proposed areas, there are beels (Oxbow lakes), where project will be providing brood fish stocking support. This activity will help to develop alternative livelihoods for the hardcore poor flood affected families. The project will stock indigenous varieties of broods in oxbow lakes. The project will make agreement with the Union Disaster Management Committees (UDMC) to select and maintain the oxbow lakes where the project will provide brood fish stocking support. A total of 400 households will get capital support for fish cultivation including 3 days long skill training on fish cultivation.


      1. Crab cultivation and fattening:


In the selected parts of proposed project area, majority of lands is being occupied for shrimp cultivation. Due to use of saline water in shrimp field, there is no scope of cultivating paddy in surrounding land. Recently, few households in particular areas have started crab cultivation for small scale commercial use. The crab fattening is highly profitable and very much feasible for surrounding shrimp cultivation areas. Also, the market is very smooth and linked with international market. The project will support 100 selected households (with ponds) for crab cultivation. Capital support including materials will be provided to them. In addition, 3 days long technical training will be arranged for the selected household members.


      1. Productive asset transfer:


The most vulnerable households in the proposed area have very limited sources of income generating activities. Majority of them are dependent on day labouring which is only possible for 4-6 months round the year. They also do not have access to land or special skills set for alternative income generation. It might be possible to supplement in their income by rearing livestock and introduction of small scale business support. During field assessment, it has been observed that sheep, duck, poultry etc. are potential and adaptable livestock in proposed areas. Also, small business like grocery shop, supply chain in fish/shrimp, processing and manufacturing family goods are also promising in some context. Particularly, tailoring can be a potential income generating source for women to meet the local needs. The project will provide productive asset transfer support for most vulnerable households. Beside, skill transfer opportunities will be provided adjusted according to the business support and/or assets introduced to the households.


      1. Piloting innovative adaptable options


The project proposes to introduce some of the innovative, low cost and adaptable livelihood opportunities which might not be fully tested in the proposed region. All these interventions will be identified in the livelihood analysis phase, where agricultural extension department, research institutes and other expert sources will be involved in the process. Once successfully piloted, the project will make sure the findings of the interventions are shared at wider scale for replication and scaling out at a larger scale in the area. The project will pilot innovative livelihood options with 300-350 households supplemented by technical, training and regular follow-up.


7.2 Implementation Strategies & Activities under Result #2


Improved policy and institutional arrangements to plan and deliver climate resilient development approaches at local level (Institutional strengthening)


7.2.1 Review and Revitalization of Disaster Management Committees (DMCs) at local level (18 committees)


To understand the existing status of the Disaster Management Committees (DMCs) at union, upazila and district levels, a comprehensive review will be carried out. This review will create opportunities to understand whether the DMCs are properly formed and functioning as per SoD. All 10 UP, 4 UzP and 4 districts level DMCs will be revitalized and reviewed through consultation process to ensure institutionalization of Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) issues in the local community. Through this review process needs for strengthening those committees will be identified. The UDMCs will be the coordinating bodies at the unions to create and maintain the liaison between the Upazila level relevant stakeholders, PO/CBOs and the targeted communities. The UDMCs will be reformed in coordination with the local govt. authority to ensure it consists of the relevant and active members to serve the purpose.


7.2.2 Formation & Support PO CBOs

The project will strengthen communities through organising and supporting Community-Based Organizations (CBOs). At the inception phase, the Primary Organisations (PO) will be formed with key community people at the village level. Consisting of 20-25 community members, the POs will directly work for and with the target community. On average, in each village there will be 1 POs formed, while the number of POs might change based on the size of the village. The main responsibility of the CBOs will be to represent the issues from the village level at the Union level and maintain regular coordination with the UDMC. CBOs will comprise selected vulnerable poor people belonging to diverse community of landless, outcaste, untouchables and religio-ethnic minorities. Each CBO will have 25 members and will be managed by their respective 5 member executive committee. The CBO building process will conform to IRB’s gender policy. The CBOs will be assisted to establish linkage with local administration, concerned government agencies, other NGOs and other civil society groups. CBOs will be a medium to implement other project activities in the communities and also undertake social mobilisation and advocacy.


7.2.3 Carrying Out Training Need Assessment (TNA) Survey

To properly identify and to assess the training needs, both primary and secondary level data will be required and collected through training needs assessment. The objectives of the training need assessment survey are to identify knowledge gaps of the project beneficiaries on different socio-economic issues and operation of livelihood options, find out the strategy to minimize the gaps and contents for development of training kits. The training needs assessment will be conducted by using some specific methodologies by involving the project beneficiaries as the potential respondents of Training Needs Assessment. The major respondents will be marginalized people/households as the TNA will include women & men from poor and hardcore poor families, landless, religio-ethnic minorities, people with disability and disaster victims. Other NGO officials, government officials and representatives of local government institutions will also be respondents of the TNA.


The important methodologies/tools that will be followed are literature review for collecting secondary data, rapid rural appraisal (RRA)/focus group discussion (FGD) for collecting primary data from the beneficiaries and other most potential respondents, case study/analysis on the vulnerable beneficiaries, in-depth interview, key informant interview and validation workshop. Each of the events will have specific sample size. The study will be conducted covering 20% of the selected wards of 11 unions. During the initial period of the project, this survey will be conducted. Besides this, the livelihood and socio-economic related literature will be reviewed collecting from different local level NGOs.


The filled out questionnaires and checklists will be considered as the source of raw data, and for effective and accurate analysis and for quality output generation. The following activities will be done on the data collected:



The collected primary data will be analyzed using SPSS program. The analyzed data will assist to make a list of real needs of training, their needs and available finding and recommendations. Firstly draft study report will be prepared. Then a consultation on draft report with the relevant authority of Islamic Relief will be conducted. Based on the explored information from the consultation, the report will be finalized and submitted to IR authority.


      1. Conduct inclusive CRA and assessment of coping strategies (10 Unions)


Inclusive Community Risk Assessment (CRA) will be one of the most important initial steps towards promoting resilient communities. Comprehensive process of Community Risk Assessment (CRA) will be conducted with all the targeted unions to analyze the climatic shocks, trends, risks, resources, capacities and existing practices in the local community. Based on the analysis, entirely conducted through a participatory approach from the community, a coping strategy will be developed which the community will adopt through practice for future adaptation measures. In all the 10 unions, Community Risk Assessment (CRA) will be undertaken with the participation of community and local level stakeholders.


IRW and its partners will work with the local DMCs and CBOs to enhance their skills on risk assessment so that they can lead and facilitate the entire process of CRA in the targeted areas. Selected team members from the partners, UDMCS and CBOs will be trained as master trainer on CRA through ToTs who will then transfer the skills among local DMCs and CBOs members. ToT module developed by CDMP and their prescribed facilitators will be utilized for conducting these TOTs. The process will cover fundamental component of raising awareness as they participate in the process they discuss their situation, realise their capacities and coping strategies, understand the risks and hazards they face and identify activities that they can do to strengthen their levels of preparedness. By using participatory methods to map the hazards and risks, awareness of hazards will be raised and will form the basis for community based disaster preparedness plan. The project will also use the process to enable PO/CBO and Paani Committee to explore existing and indigenous coping strategies that those vulnerable to disasters have used, to be able to draw on good practices, indigenous knowledge, and strengthen preparedness efforts.


      1. Prepare Risk Reduction Action Plan at Union level (10 Plans)


As a result of CRA, Risk Reduction Action Plans (RRAP) will be developed for each targeted union based on the findings and needs from the CRA. The small scale mitigation and the capacity building of the community people will be planned appropriately for each target village based on this RRAP. Apart from the activities and the locations/groups for interventions, the responsible authority, time-frame and the support stakeholders will be pointed out through the process.


A community based monitoring system to track vulnerability and coping strategies will be put in place and results will be periodically shared with relevant authorities. Towards the end of the process the community will be able to prepare their own mitigation and preparedness action plan. Through this process, local government and communities will increase their awareness, report on CRA findings, and identify disaster risk management (DRM) plans and activities. Special emphasis will be given on implementing those plans developed through the CRA process. Focused emphasis will be given in community based DRR activities through mobilizing PO/CBOs to self-establish village reconstruction and maintenance groups to adopt appropriate protection and extension measures following the CRA report. Alongside, Paani Committees, PO/CBOs will also persuade the CRA report findings to be included in the UDMC, UzDMC, Bangladesh Water Development Board and other Upazila and district level development plan i.e. implementing mitigation activities with resources from Test Relief (TR), KABIKHA (Food for Work). The facilitation role, as opposed to implementation role, is an essential key to the process, to promote community empowerment and sustainability, to enable communities to permanently protect their villages and homesteads from erosion.


      1. Validation of Union level action plans at Upazila and District level (4 Meetings)


The Risk Reduction Action Plans (RRAPs) finalized at the union level will be validated both at Upazila and District level for finalization and sharing of ownership at the upper stakeholder level. 08 validation workshops will be arranged at Upazila and District level (2 each).


      1. Contingency Planning for 10 UDMCs


As per SOD, laid by Government of Bangladesh (GOB), all the unions and Upazilas in Bangladesh are supposed to develop their respective emergency contingency planning in prescribed formats. However, based on previous experiences, either it is not developed at all or developed with poor quality, thus unusable. The project will encourage and support DMCs at union and Upazila level to develop and revise it on regular interval as per SOD. IRB will organize the workshops with expected participants from DMCs. Following capacity building workshops, hand holding technical support will be provided to DMCs for developing / revising contingency plans. This process will also help us to promote participation of trained CBOs representatives in various local level committees which are formed as part of contingency plans.


      1. Display of Risk and Resource Plan and Maps at Village, Union and Upazila Level


The Risk and Resource Maps and Plans developed through the CRA process will be displayed at common community places for visibility, transparency and awareness of the mass community people regarding the current risks, available resources and the planning for them and their roles within the plan.


      1. Preparation of risk reduction plans at CBO/ PO level – in view of phase out strategy


Based on the union level RRAP, the CBOs will develop their individual RRAPs especially focusing on their own village to separate their needs and accordingly set their priorities. These village level RRAPs will be prepared as part of the phase out strategy of the project so that individual CBOs can continue the process of adaptation and practice at the household and community level.


      1. Capacity building training for UDMCs, community members & PO/CBOs


In line with the guidance provided in HFA and Standing order for disaster management (SoD), the project aims to build up capacity of the LGIs officials and committee members so that they can mainstream DRR and CCA to the regular development initiatives as well as respond quickly during disaster in a collective way. The project will closely work with the UPs in strengthening the existing Disaster Management Committee (UDMC) of 10 Union Parishads, 84 CBOs, 4 Upazillas and 4 districts through training and orientation/consultation sessions. UDMCs will be linked with the Upazila Based Disaster Management Committee (UzDMC). IRB will activate/re-activate the UDMCs ensuring participation of CBO members from the most vulnerable communities, especially women. The project will provide capacity-building support to the UP Disaster Management Committees (UDMC) in project areas, to strengthen their technical and management capacities to undertake the roles and responsibilities stipulated in the SoD.


A total of 2,800 persons (of which at least 60% are female) from targeted most vulnerable households from the project areas will be provided with various knowledge through different awareness based training events. Trainings are primarily meant developing the human faculty and the qualities of program participants. This involves raising the level of conceptual understanding and awareness of key socio-economic issues of their common concern, as well as their organizing and leadership skills. Relevant training module and material will be developed through a participatory process of training need assessment as mentioned earlier. Following table illustrates the initial plan for the trainings, however, the project proposes a flexible approach for realign as the need emerge in course of training need assessment survey to be conducted as well as project implementations.


Name of the Training

Duration & Type

Organize workshop for Ward level DMC leaders and Union authorities on NDMP and DMB SOD (10 Sessions)

10 union level workshops will be arranged on NDMP and SOD for the ward level DMC leaders to ensure they have the knowledge of the legal frameworks and govt. policies while working at the local level on the DRR/CCA issues.

Organize workshop on new NDMP and current SOD at Upazila level

04 workshops on new NDMP and existing SOD will be arranged at the upazila level for the key govt. stakeholders to ensure their awareness of existing govt. policies and their roles & responsibilities under the legal frameworks.

Orientation on DRR & Climate Adaptation for UDMCs

10 two-day Orientation Workshop will arranged for the UDMC members on issues related to DRR and CCA issues to ensure their knowledge and intellectual awareness of the issues to work on.

ToT on DRR and CCA for selected community leaders/ activists

10 Training of Trainers will be arranged for selected community leaders/activists on DRR/CCA issues who will take the lead and transfer the knowledge across the community as master trainers.

Training of women leaders on DRR/ CCA (5 trainings)

05 Female community members who are potential activists will be selected for training on DRR/CCA issues for ensuring practice of the measures at the household and community level both individually and collectively.

Community Management Skills Training (13 trainings)


Training on Community management skills will be arranged for potential community activists selected from POs/CBOs from 10 clusters combining the target villages. Objective of the training will be to increase the management skills and capacity of these potential community members so that they can take the lead in community based CCA practices at the end of the project phase.

Community mobilization and leadership training (10 trainings)

Training on community mobilization and leadership will be organized at the union level in each of the 10 target unions with potential key community members as participants who will be focal points and lead the mobilization process in future.

Note: Some potential persons will have the opportunity to participate in one or more trainings.


      1. Development of Training Manual and Materials


To successfully conduct training and training of trainers, a total of 7 training manual & materials will be developed on different alternative climate friendly livelihood technologies as mentioned in the above table in the light of the findings from training needs assessment.


      1. Supporting self initiatives of PO/CBOs at the immersion stage of the project


Innovative and self-led initiatives from the PO/CBOs (one in each of the target villages) will be supported at the immersion/consolidation phase of the project so that the PO/CBOs are empowered and set replicable examples for community level practice.


      1. Coordination Meeting of DMCs at Upazila and Union Level


Regular monthly meetings of DMCs at Upazila and Union level will be facilitated as a vehicle for UDMC engagement to assess, plan, estimate, and implement disaster preparedness and flood risk reduction activities. UP members will assist in community mobilization for community based disaster planning and management of various risk reduction schemes. By the end of the project, the UDMCs will have clear links to community disaster preparedness and risk management plans and will have the capacity to facilitate the creation of community-based project implementation schemes in villages. Lobbying activities will be organised with 04 UzP and 04 District DMCs and district administration officials. Special attention will be given to ensure complementarities of the activity with CDMP initiatives in the project areas. Tools, methods and materials will be also adapted from CDMP. Bi-monthly meetings will be also facilitated for effective coordination amongst all stakeholders.


On monthly basis, a total of 48 Upazila level DMC coordination meetings will be arranged in 04 Upazilas annually, half (12) of which will be supported by the project and the rest will be arranged through UzDMC. Simultaneously, a total of 396 meetings will be annually arranged for the target UDMCs, only 30 of which will be financed by the project and the remaining meetings will be arranged by the UDMC authority. The project will also promote having separate action plan with resource mobilisation and opening of bank account for UDMC as a measure to keep the UDMC active beyond the project period. All the principles of IRW community mobilisation strategy including skills development and linkages building will be incorporated into the implementation design with UDMC.


      1. Coordination meeting cum Awareness Session of POs


Once the POs are formed, they will arrange monthly awareness sessions on regular basis. These meetings will serve as coordination meeting between the selected community members. In these coordination meetings, the community members will discuss their learning and best practices and other issues for coordination including livelihood and capacity building. Similarly, the CBOs will also assemble on monthly basis for Awareness Session cum Coordination Meeting.


      1. Engaging Civil Society in Water Management Issues


Active engagement of the civil society, LGIs, CBOs and NGOs in the proposed project areas will carry forward collective efforts and stronger mass based for popular advocacy and campaign for sustainable disaster management. IRB will form a functional committees namely Paani Committee (Water-rights Committee) in project Upazilas and Central CSO/Paani Committee, each committee will be comprised of selected members and representatives from the civil society, LGIs, organized CBOs and NGOs who are working in the area. CSO/Paani Committees at both level will meet regularly on a quarterly basis to discuss the multifaceted vulnerability issues related to water-shed management, disaster issues and concerns encountered by the community and develop a collective community-based disaster management and adaptation strategy, which will serve as a “peoples’ agenda” for advocacy/campaign and persuasion works in the region as supported by a comprehensive situation reports that will be presented in the workshops on an annual basis. Through these organized committees, the project will also facilitate community disaster management planning of UDMCs, thus, the organization will extend necessary support on the implementation of the plans as needed.


IRB will ensure that specific demands to the government and calls to the people will realize through massive dissemination and public education on the disaster issue with the aid of posters and folk songs activities all throughout the proposed project areas and districts. To ensure that the advocacy agenda is carried out and elevated to proper authorities and mobilize policy makers, the CBDRM in South-west Bangladesh project will facilitate (keeping CSO/Paani Committees at the lead) public demonstration and memorandum submission to emphasize the urgency of the issue to solve and demand attention of the public especially the policy makers and Members of the Parliament (MPs) to take up the mentioned peoples’ agenda. The progress of this collective works will be discussed and shared in the press conferences which will be attended by selected media practitioners, LGIs, civil society members, policy makers or MPs, NGOs and leaders from the CBOs.


Activities

Description


Total Unit

Yr. 1

Yr. 2

Yr. 3

Quarterly Meeting of local CSO/Paani Committee

Facilitate regular quarterly meeting

3

6

2

9

Support CSO/Paani Committees' citizen mobilization activities

Support public rally, and memorandum submission at UzP and district level, press conference and seminars (UzP, regional and national level)

3

3

1

7

Policy Brief & Advocacy Agenda Setting

Consultation and workshop to develop policy brief and advocacy agenda on water management, DRR and CCA in the region


1

1

2


      1. Social Mobilization, Promotion of DRR and Climate Adaptation


There are many vulnerability factors embedded because of the total communities’ knowledge, attitude and practices. Appropriate method of social communication through BCC and IEC materials will be developed and used to promote knowledge and awareness on DRR and CCA. CBO members and volunteers will be at the driving force for this activity. The process will begin with a formative research in each of the targeted communities, to appreciate and understand where these communities are in terms of knowledge and practice related to DRR and CCA issues, and what barriers they are up against restricting them to adopt appropriate attitude and practices.


Activities

Description

Unit #

Total Unit #

Yr. 1

Yr. 2

Yr. 3

IEC/BCC material development

Process of IEC/BCC material development through a participation of relevant expert

15



15

Production & dissemination of IEC/ BCC materials

Poster, flipchart, visual documentary, bill boards, public gathering, courtyard meeting etc.

1

2

0

3

Awareness Campaign for Sundarban and Wetland Conservation

Organising awareness/campaign events i.e. mass gathering, cultural shows, rallies, human chain etc. at UP and UzP level

4

8

2

14


      1. Updating Community Risk Reduction Plans across all levels - Phase out (10 Unions)

As part of phase out strategy plan, all the RRAPs developed under the project at union level will be revised and updated through a participatory process involving key community stakeholders.


      1. Phase out workshops at Union, Upazila and District Level (18 Meetings)


The phase out strategy will be developed to ensure the sustainability of the project as well as the processes. All the relevant key stakeholders will be involved in a one day workshop. Regular follow up processes will also be carried during the project cycle to work out the modalities for handover of the project.


Project Completion Celebration in coordination with local government officials, community, CBO workers, schools and local leaders: This activity will be carried out during the closing phase of the project to share with key functionaries on the achievements during the project period. Contributions of various key stakeholders will also be acknowledged during this one day consultation meeting.


7.3 Implementation Strategies & Activities under Result #3


Build capacities of DMCs, community organisations and partners to effectively respond to disasters and implement socially inclusive and innovative community based climate change adaptation and mitigation


      1. Enhancing Early Warning System


This project activity will help to enhance and institutionalize the existing country’s early warning capacity and will ensure last mile connectivity – which in case of cyclones is a matter of life and death. At the village level, early warning volunteers will be identified and equipped to maintain high level of efficiency in case of any emergency. A total of 500 volunteers will be developed and capacitated through training to promote early warning message at their own villages maintaining linkage with UDMC. Their training will not only include early warning system for cyclone, but it will also include tsunami, flood and drought. Trigger Indicators (TIs) will be identified involving the community people and mechanism of monitoring and reporting of TIs will be developed to link themed with the EW. DMCs and other groups i.e. PO, CBOs & Paani Committee will be assisted to develop monitoring and reporting plans related to TIs.


To strengthen the warning system at the union level, 50 sets of early warning equipments including megaphone, hand siren and radio will be provided to all UDMCs. These will be stockpiled at the UP office under the management of UP. The volunteers will use these warning equipments during the period of an upcoming disaster.


Once the national level early warning is received through the radio, these volunteers will spread out the early warning information in the villages and disseminate cyclone warning signals at door to door level using megaphones, hand sirens and public address system. Public awareness during normal situation will be integral part of this component of the project. Close coordination will be maintained with all the mandated organisations and programmes in the country, and all the volunteers will be registered in the national database of the cyclone preparedness programme (CPP). Partner will monitor whether actual systems are being utilized and reports generated by them. Simulation exercise and mock drills will be conducted to test the effectiveness and operation of the EW system.

      1. Training on First Aid and Search and Rescue


Under Standing Order on Disaster Management, local level disaster management committees are recognised as one of the key component to disaster management. Local level governance structures in the form of disaster management committees, community based organisations and community volunteers groups are established with the pre-defined roles and responsibilities in the emergency response. At the moment, these members are not capacitated enough to take responsibility and play their roles and responsibilities effectively and this activity aims to identify and select potential activists and volunteers during the meetings and strengthen the response capacities of the local governance structures by imparting separate trainings on first aid, search and rescue, and fire safety in partnership with the Fire Service and Civil Defense Department of Bangladesh and Bangladesh Red Crescent Society (BDRCS). A total of 20 trainings would be conducted and will directly involve and benefit 600 persons. The details are:


Training

Quantity

Number of days

Technical partner

Participants

First Aid

10

03

BDRCS

300

Search, rescue and fire safety

10

03

BDRCS and Fire service

300


These trainings would focus on transferring advanced knowledge and skills to community volunteers by which they can take essential measures to better respond to any disaster situation. They would be able to take better control and manage the incidence of any damage in cyclone and floods. These activists will then form different task forces with identified roles and responsibilities and would be operational during emergency situation. This training would also provide an opportunity to register and recognize these activists as community level responders with the service providers and mandated organisations like Fire Service and Civil Defense, Bangladesh Red Crescent Society and Cyclone Preparedness Programme. These trainings would be complemented by the provision of equipments (lifebuoy and life jacket) needed for the participants under their local risk reduction plans.


      1. Household Adaptation Plans and Self initiatives


Community awareness sessions will be arranged with weekly meetings of the Primary Organisations in order to develop knowledge and understanding on climate change adaptation. A total of 5,375 family adaptation plans and self initiatives will be demonstrated in the project duration. Field organizers and trained community volunteer group members will take lead role in carrying out these sessions. The basic module and methodology alongside the work plan to conduct these sessions will be developed and finalized during the project orientation training.


Islamic Relief has already developed training aid in the form of flips cards etc and those will be reprinted and provided to the trainers. The community people will be motivated to undertake their own initiatives identified on the family level adaptation plans. It will also be the responsibility of the community volunteers to demonstrate and link pilot initiatives carried out under the project and ensure the relevant activities to their local context are replicated.


      1. Carbon Storage and Carbon Emission Reduction Activities


Though the project has been designed to build the adaptation capacity, yet to enhance household income, this project has planned to replace kerosene lantern by distribution of solar powered lantern and conduct homestead plantation. The poor rural people have to depend on the kerosene lantern as the lighting source, which is very costly. Replacing the kerosene lantern, solar powered lantern/lamp will make access of the rural people to very low cost power for lighting which will reduce their cost for lighting and reduce household level non-food expenditure. Kerosene lantern users will no longer need to buy kerosene and and/or candles for lighting, which will save a large amount of income on the long run. It has been explored from a study that on an average a rural household needs 4 liters of kerosene in a month for lighting. At the rate of Tk. 65/liter, total expenditure for 4 liters of kerosene is Tk. 260 and expenditure for one year is Tk. 3,120. So, expenditure for kerosene for 10 years will be Tk. 31,200. On the other hand, cost for purchasing one lantern is only Tk. 1500 which will be operational for 10 years. During this 10 year period, the HH will need to purchase two batteries spending Tk. 600.00. So the total cost for 10 years for one lantern will be Tk. 2100. One lantern will also reduce 0.07 ton CO2 emission. Savings expected for one HH using solar lantern are:


Homestead plantation will be done combining fruits and timber trees. Fruit trees will ensure HH food security and additional income for the people. It will be alternative income source for them as there is market for both fruit and timber at the local level. Additionally, plants of one acre will reduce 3 tons of carbon per year. Details are shown in the following table:

Options

Total

Homestead Plantation

800

Distribution of Solar Powered Lantern

800

Total HH

1600


      1. Small scale adaptation measures based on the risk reduction plans


Community risk assessment process mandated by the GoB will help identify and implement high priority (according to local community) and low cost and innovative small scale adaptation measures which might include installation of water treatment plant, biogas plant, climate resilient sanitation and drinking water options, homestead raising with shelter repair, construction and/or repair of link road, school ground raising, and repairing culverts and embankments etc. Detailed cost estimates will be prepared by engineers, once the risk reduction action plans are prepared by the communities.


Active participation of local DMCs, CBOs and concerned line departments will be ensured during planning and implementation to ensure the ownership and transparency of interventions. Contribution in kind from the local community and local government bodies will be promoted while implementation of all small scale adaptation measures to ensure their ownership. Before commencing these interventions, consultation and arrangements will be finalized with local DMCs and CBOs for the future operation and maintenance of the same and accordingly all the structures will be handed over to them.


      1. School Safety Plans


School safety activities aim to inspire students, teachers and SMCs to promote a culture of safety at schools as well as increase the resilience of schools to climate shocks. These activities also aim to motivate local authorities to integrate school safety into their School Improvement Programs (SIP) as well as develop their capacity to support school in disaster preparedness and response. The project will adopt three fold strategy including strengthening the capacity of concerned institutions, mobilizing students and teachers as change agents and advocacy towards disaster reduction and climate adaptation. A total of 30 schools will be targeted under the project, and each school will be required to develop a school safety plan.


The plan is intended to help create and maintain a safe environment conducive to learning for students and staffs including three primary areas, which are, school profiling, crisis preparedness, and emergency action plans. For conducting school safety plans for every school, the template will be provided and participatory sessions will be considered ensuring participation from students, teachers, SMC and parents.  These plans will also identify the need to organize school tasks forces on safe school leadership, first aid responders, search & rescue, shelter management and education in emergencies etc. A concrete risk reduction action plans will be developed under this action plan. The school safety plan will be reviewed and updated annually.


      1. Formation of SDMCs and Student Council – 15


In every targeted school under the project, School Disaster Management Committees (SDMCs) will be formed comprising of 21 to 25 members. School teachers, students, parents and SMC members will be active members of this committee. Besides, student clubs, task forces and councils will be formed as sub-groups and will comprise of mainly school students coming together under the leadership of SDMC. Students are powerful change agents of the community which is why the project is underpinned by the idea that students, through organized councils and clubs, will be able to lead the campaign of safety and resilience. Secondary schools and their adolescent populations will be targeted. This age group not only corresponds to young and dynamic individuals but also to a key period where values, ideals and personalities are being shaped. Innovation, creation, curiosity, and challenge are in the nature of adolescents who are looking for active participation and a role to play in positive social change.


      1. Capacity building of 15 SDMCs


The inputs of the project with regards to SDMC will mainly focus on capacity-building through a comprehensive training package on safety and resilience related school issues but also through ensuring the active and meaningful participation of these members in all decision-making processes under School Management Committees. Interactive awareness creation plans (part of school safety plans) will be developed and implemented at each school and the wider community. Both students and teachers will have specific awareness creation activities they will carry out with their peers to raise awareness on the impact of disasters on education and the potential risk reduction options. Awareness levels of students and teachers will be assessed at the start and end of the project to demonstrate the effectiveness of this activity.

      1. Facilitate School Contingency Plans


School management committee members as well as students will be facilitated to develop school contingency plans based on their risk assessment findings. Contingency Plans will indentify preparedness and response measures to be taken by schools in pre, during and post disaster phases. Task forces will be formed for specific preparedness and response tasks such as First Aid, Search & Rescue, Shelter Management and Early Warning.


      1. Student Led Micro Project for Safer Schools


Based on school risk assessment findings, student clubs will be facilitated to develop and implement micro projects that address the identified disaster risks. Students are excellent risk communicators and they will be encouraged, through their micro projects, to create awareness on disaster and their risks, school contingency plans and mock drills, as well as other innovative ways which develop a culture of safety at schools.

 

      1. Community based emergency food and/or seed bank for food security during emergencies


Due to lack of welfare economic systems, thousands of people go hungry for sickness, jobless, addiction and violence in emergencies. Due to lack of food security opportunities, the community people suffer from food crisis and it tends to migration. This project will open an opportunity of community based solutions for ensuring available food supplies in emergencies. The stock options will be created in the union level under the guidance of UDMCs.


Benefit: Normally, farmers sell their harvest in the market at cheap price and buy rice when their food stock is depleted at relatively higher price. The CBEFB is the most feasible strategy to access food grains at fair price. Once they sell extra harvest to the CBEFB, they can access grains at a reasonable price from the CBEFB when they need desperately. Therefore, the marginal profit will cover running and administrative costs. The farmers will get opportunity to borrow food from the CBEFB if they are unable to buy food due to lack of money in crisis period. The borrowers will return the food when they will harvest their crops.


Supply of food and seeds in disaster quickly: The UDMCs will supply the food grains and seeds of homestead gardening to the victims on emergency if the people face crisis. The victims will return the borrowed grain/ seed later when they will grow crops in their fields. The hardcore poor people who will be unable to return, communities will identify mechanism to purchase same quantity of food grain supplied to this hardcore poor group from the relief funds, donations or fund raising.


Operational Modality: The project will bear administrative and operating costs of the bank for three years only. After the period, the UDMC will take over the responsibility to run the CBEFB.


      1. Improve disaster early warning knowledge, attitude & practices of communities


This group of activities is to facilitate UDMC’s and CBOs activate around improving KAP (knowledge, Attitude and Practices) of their constituencies. The UDMCs with support from PO/CBOs and Paani Committee will serve as the focal point in the community for this activity. Investment will be made to i) develop and disseminate mass awareness IEC/BCC materials, ii) display CRA map, iii) awareness activities i.e. observing National Disaster Preparedness Day, public gathering, cultural activities iv) supporting UDMC for warning dissemination and v) simulation/mock drill.


      1. Observing International and National Days on Disasters, Environment and WASH


These days will be celebrated at the field level with active participation of the community as well as local institutions. Some of the days that have been identified are International Day for Disaster Reduction, National Disaster Management Day, Environment and WASH day. The project will continue to upscale its efforts towards working with communities and institutions to enhance their knowledge and social capital through arranging DRR exhibitions, mock drills and other interactive activities on these days. Communities and institution will get their opportunity to demonstrate their understanding on CCA and DRR through innovative measures.


      1. Strengthening the local response capacities


Islamic Relief Worldwide has been working on every major disaster in Bangladesh since its very beginning of work in 1991. We command a rather good position in the field of disaster responses in Bangladesh. However it is important that in the changing global scenario and also the rising standards in the field of disaster response and long-term post-disaster rehabilitation, we are always prepared. For smooth implementation of our disaster management operations in the country we have segregated Bangladesh into five Emergency Response Zones (ERZs). Nature of hazards (disaster hotspots), geographical positioning of IRW and partners, and communications network are important determining factors in the process of this decision-making.


This very activity focus is to build capacity of the organization, partner agencies, CBOs and volunteers for emergency preparedness and response, reach to community in high-risk disaster areas, enabling to act as a locus for disaster risk reduction, institutionalizing implementation of the various disaster management frameworks within organizational systems. The Programme will work in five response zones of the country linking all the disaster prone districts. At present IR-Bangladesh has its direct presence through field offices which are located in disaster prone areas. Over the years of our presence, we have established many, so far, non-formal yet strategic partners and volunteer organisation in different disaster prone locations. In the present strategy phase (2011-2015) we at IRW-Bangladesh are also looking forward to working through reputed national partner NGOs, Community Based Organizations and trained volunteers when responding to disasters.


The proposed year-long intervention would go a long way in supporting us to establish a well trained staff, cadre of volunteers strategically placed all across Bangladesh and establishment of strategic formal partnerships with reputed NGOs and CBOs in the country. We also look forward to a better prepared team capable of handling all major aspects and thematic areas of disaster response viz. preparing urgent proposals, leadership and emergency management, handling the media, networking with other stakeholders – be it INGOs, NGOs and the Government – shelter managements, WASH, children in emergencies, women, people with disabilities, setting up makeshift and/or transit camps, aspects and need of psychosocial counseling in major disasters, etc. We also do look forward to working closely with other alliances, forums and/or technical stakeholders during this year for a better coordinated capacity building work at IRW Bangladesh. Working thus would also help us in raising our brand presence and visibility at National and international levels.


Through standardizing the organizational policy and consolidating the process, the organization would be able to immediately respond to natural disasters in the immediate aftermath in any areas of the country. IRW also has to address the issues of internal capacities which need to be updated to prepare the organisation for any small and medium scale emergency situation in the country. This will be done by harnessing and building the capacities of the staff members currently working with the organisation and its partners. All these team members will form a part of a highly specialised unit with desired equipments to undertake emergency response within 24 hours.


7.4 Implementation Strategies & Activities under Result #4


Enhanced sharing, learning and reflection on practical experience and good models of climate change mitigation and adaptation for integration at local, national and international level


      1. Involvement of Research Institutes and Universities


To identify new and climate friendly livelihoods, adaptation, mitigation and drinking water and sanitation options for the project area, relevant researchers will be engaged. Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Agriculture Research Institute, Khulna University, Patuakhali Science and Technology University and other relevant research partners will be engaged for this purpose.


      1. Action Research and Documentation


The project will follow an action research strategy, with the purpose to learn, reflect and plan effectively for climate change interventions in Bangladesh. This experience will be accumulated as a source of written evidence for learning and reflection at local, national and international level. The communities in the coastal region have already been used to the living conditions and innovated quite a few number of adaptation strategies. The project will build and expand on any such identified practice for wider replication, and will also document the learning and usefulness of the project interventions proposed to increase the resilience of the communities. The field level findings have suggested the following steps in this regard:


      1. Situation analysis report


A situation analysis report will be prepared to review the state of the water logging situation in historical perspectives and to insights to undertake activities of the project.


      1. Policy brief and advocacy agenda setting


It is recognized that the pursuit for effective, sustainable and long-term disaster management in the South-western region will be realized through advocacy/campaign and intensive persuasion works. Research initiatives will be undertaken to identify policy and advocacy issues and agenda.


Activities

Description

Total Unit

Support issue based research and study on Water mgt., DRR and Climate Adaptation

Situation study and analysis, good practices, thematic studies and model development studies on the regional context.

2

Audio-visual documentation

Video documentation of good practices models and situations etc.

2

Acquisition of documents and literatures on water mgt. DRR & CCA

2



      1. Campaign and Media mobilization

The project will facilitate the tactical battle (of the most marginalised and vulnerable communities) by engaging key stakeholders such as the Member of Parliament (MPs) and policy makers, aid agencies and international financial institutions (IFIs) to address and solve the root-causes of the vulnerabilities such as waster-shed management in the region and ensure sustainable DRR and CCA. Addressing regional level is one of the void areas that development initiatives do not always focus on. Knowledge generated from local level by implementing a project or programme is shared mainly at national level. Some of the cases, knowledge are shared at upazila level; however, gap always stays during sharing at district level. Sensitizing district level remains unaddressed thus advocacy events are not canalized bottom up. Under the activity, project will share project findings, knowledge and process, with district offices and will create link between district, upazila and union parishad to incorporate climate change issue to the annual plans and budget.


Islamic Relief through this project intend to contribute in increasing the knowledge base on Islamic perspective of development, sharing lessons and knowledge at local, regional, national and global level. These platforms will provide us the opportunity to share and document lessons and at the same time new knowledge generated at global level will reach to the government officials and will pave the way for mentionable progress in that respect. The key activities for advocacy will be-


IRB will supplement its activity through continuous publicity and media mileage, intensive persuasion work or lobbying for pushing the adoption of peoples’ alternative option for sustainable disaster management and adaptation strategy, and mobilization to project grassroots agenda and ensure media coverage. The project will also support demonstration and memorandum submission by affected communities. The following other thematic areas will also be covered under this activity:


      1. Persuasion with the Key Actors for Effective and Long-term Disaster Mitigation and Management


The project will support Paani Committee, CBO/CSOs and NGO Networks to lobby with key actors for effective and long-term disaster mitigation and management for the South-western region. Through representation and dialogue with parliament members and concerned government officials, conduct seminar on disaster management with national level actors and will submit memos and representation to Upazila and district level actors, MPs. National level roundtable will be organized with publication of special supplement in national newspaper.


The project will also facilitate these enabling activities to ensure endorsement and commitment of the MPs and policy makers on the issue, particularly on the peoples’ agenda in pursuit of the adoption of peoples’ alternative option for sustainable disaster management and adaptation strategy in the South-western region. IRB will conduct regular follow up communications, in this way, MPs and policy makers will be made aware that their actions on the issues are being closely watched and provide IRB with updates of their actions initiated in the policy chamber. This will ensure that the issue is taken as priority agenda for legislation and subsequently for policy action.


      1. Awareness Campaign for Wetland Conservation

The project will organize massive campaign in the wetland areas involving the local people, CSO/Paani Committee, opinion leaders, professional groups and government livestock and fisheries officials. The campaign will focus on wetland conservation and using them wisely to maintain their environment conducive to reproduction of the aquatic species. IRB through this campaign will try to develop a vigilant group to monitor the growth and maintenance of the wetland environment. Involving the community, local government bodies and Upazila fishery officer, massive awareness campaign will be organized to motivate the local inhabitants on the wetland conservation and saving the indigenous fish species from extinction.


      1. Media Mobilisation


Media plays effective role in rallying support behind an issue and disseminate widely for opinion building and policy decision. IRB has been partially successful on its own to mobilize the print media in the region by highlighting the issue of Water-logging, cyclone, flood and other disaster issues. With the support of the project, IRB wants to develop a massive media campaign. Along with public relation and facilitating regional, national and international media visit to the vulnerable areas, the project will also publish poster, leaflets, billboard, newsletter and video documentary.


Activities

Description

Units #

Total Unit #

Yr. 1

Yr. 2

Yr. 3

Media Mobilization

Facilitate and support media visit and broadcast activities

1

2

2

5

News Letter

Publication and printing

2

4

4

10

Publish leaflets

Publication and printing


10000


10,000

Publish Posters

Publication and printing

10000


10000

20,000

Billboards

Develop & setup

4

8

4

16

Publish booklets

Publication and printing


3000


3,000


8. Project Management

Through mobilizing committed and experienced social mobilisation and management staff, a need based management and implementation structure for the project have been developed. Organization's core financial management and monitoring section will be engaged in overall financial management and quality management of the project. The project partner will strongly follow the compliance issues, technical guidance and advices from specific Islamic Relief’s requirements.


IRB's project coordination and management system includes standard procedures for quality control for all its projects/programmes. One key aspect of this procedure is the establishment of a project management committee (PCM) consisting of members from the project and senior management personnel from IRB. The committee meets regularly to oversee the performance of the project. To avoid duplication of efforts, the project management also maintains regular coordination with IRB's other ongoing projects, as well as other NGOs. In addition, IRB attend regular coordination and sharing meetings with Upazila and district administration to exchange knowledge and experiences.


For this project a Project Management Committee (PMC) will be formed having representatives from CBOs, member of UDMC and Paani Committee, and IRB staff. The PMC will be in charge of planning, coordinating and implementing the project components. PMC will take conscious effort to ensure equal participation of male and female staff in decision-making process of the project. The PMC will be responsible to the Director of IRB through the Program Manager.


8.1 Management Structure for the Proposed Project


8.1.1 Overall Responsibilities


Head of Climate Change and Disaster Resilience programme in Bangladesh will provide strategic leadership and guidance in implementing the project. He will be responsible for oversees overall planning, development, implementation and review of the project; lead liaison, communication, advocacy and lobbying at strategic and policy level. And will also lead media, communications and visibility related to the project implementation.


The Country Director will be also responsible for ensuring the compliance issues, technical guidance and advices from ISLAMIC RELIEF.






A team of regular staff led by the Project Manager (PM) (PM will be the Task Manager of the proposed project) will implement the project at the field level. The PM in close collaboration will responsible for overall implementation of project activities, including:

  1. Oversees project activities and ensures project achieves its targets in a timely manner in accordance with the compliance issues, technical guidance and advices from ISLAMIC RELIEF.

  2. Provide guidance to project staff in social mobilisation, technical issues and capital/assets transfer.

  3. Ensures compliance with standards, rules and regulations,

  4. Coordination and linkages with key stakeholders

  5. Undertakes coordination and advocacy work at national level and

  6. Execution and management of contracts, including reporting.


PM will be assisted by a group of skilled personnel who will lead project implementation in gour Upazilas. Within the first two-months of the project start, recruitment of staff will be completed. Job Description for each position will be developed prior to the recruitment process. Every effort would be made to ensure a gender-sensitive and balanced team. Due to the very specific nature of the project, the project staff will be recruited locally.



9. Monitoring and Evaluation


The M&E systems will be designed to provide not only information for reporting purposes, but also information for decision-making. Over the life of the project, some critical decisions need to be made toward continuing the project activities that are effective, and modifying or discontinuing those that are not. The system will be thus an essential tool to track program beneficiaries and progress at all levels, as well as an integral management tool. It will be evidence based, participatory and software automated, with learning and quality assurance at the centre. A database will be set up in customised software to pull out whatever information is necessary to populate the Indicator, over and above the information collected in the random household surveys. This system will be then augmented by various MS-Excel or MS-Word based systems used by Managers to track the project’s progress. A sub-set of indicators will be identified to provide information in assessing progress in outcomes. These indicators will be used at different level of management strata to identify implementation gaps impacting program outcomes.


Strength of the M&E system lies in its ability to contribute to the learning of program beneficiaries. Data collected and information generated will be shared with beneficiaries regularly, especially various community group and committees. A 'prompting' approach will be used, where summary information at the lowest tier will be taken by IRB staff to communities. The information will be shared in the community meetings, prompting debate and discussions which will help community members understand what is "working well" and "not working well" for others, and why, and also to identify individual and collective issues which need to be addressed. Accordingly, resources will be adjusted to different needs ensuring optimum efficiency.


A Senior Manager will be designated for overall responsibility of M&E system to be responsible for overall data quality assessment (DQA) such as data collection, timeliness, data processing, interpretation and reporting. IRB’s M&E Unit will supplement the project M&E manager, providing strategic guidance and support for reflective and efficient M&E systems. The project will continuously document lessons learned on different critical issues, including intended and unintended impact on program beneficiaries, which will be shared with other stakeholders.


9.1 Multistage Monitoring Strategies


The following multistage monitoring strategies will be followed to monitor the project:


9.2 Frequency /Time-frame of Monitoring


The time-frame or the frequencies of monitoring to be followed are mentioned below:


9.3 Monitoring Method and Approach

9.3.1 Preparation of Monitoring Plan


Based on the monitoring objective(s) and indicators, a monitoring plan will be prepared to undertake the monitoring tasks in a participatory manner. A Monitoring Plan would contain following information:


9.3.2 Tools and Approaches


A key feature of the Participatory M&E systems to be used effectively for decision-making, decision-makers need to have the information on hand when decisions need to be made. The major tools and approaches planned for monitoring and evaluation include:


Logical framework

This will show the overall and specific objective, the results, major activities and inputs with associated indicators at each level. This will be used as a management tool to monitor the progress of the action.


Baseline and End line Study

In the first quarter of the first year of the project, baseline information on impact indicators associated with the overall and specific objective and results will be compiled into a baseline report. Both qualitative and quantitative information will be obtained as part of the baseline exercise. The targets of different indicators and activities proposed initially will be reviewed and revised based on this baseline information. End line will be planned in the last quarter of the project implementation


PM&E

A participatory CBA evaluation tools will be applied to empower the community to measure the effectiveness the of CBA interventions. This will allow community to monitor and evaluate the CBA interventions and reporting.


Project monitoring system

A project monitoring system will be developed involving all the partners to regularly monitor the progress made against the indicators identified. This monitoring system will show the type of data needed for each indicator, the methodology and frequency of data collection, and how the data will be analyzed and reported.


Annual project review meetings

These will be held at the beginning of each operational year. One of the keys to effective monitoring is the development of operational plans and periodic review of the plans using information from the monitoring system to make adjustments as required.


Quarterly reports

These will be prepared using the information obtained from the monitoring system and activity reports from partners for dissemination to the stakeholders of the action. The reports will include the achievements over the reporting period, cumulative progress against planned results, the observed impact relative to overall and specific objectives, major positive and negative issues affecting implementation, major lessons learned, and the activities planned for the next period.


Joint field visits

Such visits are instrumental for monitoring the quality of the project actions with technical partners with staff with different technical backgrounds. Having different perspectives on the team will facilitate a more complete analysis and understanding and avoid that cross-cutting themes, i.e., equality, gender HIV/AIDS and environment are not overlooked. The joint field visits will be scheduled quarterly for the first year of the project and semi-annually thereafter.


9.3.3 Monitoring Instruments


A variety of monitoring tools will be used for the purpose of monitoring. Care would be taken to make the monitoring tools user-friendly, improvement-oriented, simple (language), self-instructional, comprehensive, independent of bias, co and easy to analyze. Generally, following tools are used:


9.3.4 Reporting and Feedback Process

Finally report will be prepared and shared at various levels.


9.4 Mid-Term Review


A midterm review will be conducted by an external organisation after the 18 months of implementation of the project action, to assess the progress, effects and impact of program activities, to identify lessons learned, and to formulate recommendations for changes to the implementation strategy for the remaining action duration. The baseline information gathering exercise conducted at the beginning of the project will be replicated to identify changes on the performance indicators that have occurred since the project began. Information from this exercise will be made available to an independent evaluation team that will be responsible for assessing the program. The Terms of Reference for the MTR will be developed by IRB in consultation with all project stakeholders.


9.5 Final evaluation


Near the end of the project action, a final evaluation will be conducted by an external organisation to assess the impact of the project and to generate lessons learned. The baseline information gathering exercise will be replicated again as part of the end line survey to identify changes on the performance indicators that have occurred during the action. This information will be made available to an independent evaluation team that will be conducting the final evaluation. These Terms of Reference will also be developed by IRB in consultation with all project stakeholders.


    1. How Learning will be incorporated into the project


IRB will ensure internalisation of the learning from the project into the organisational systems and structure to ensure replication and up-scaling. The learning’s and findings from the project will play significant role in feeding into the decision making and accountability process. Methods and tools to ensure regular exchange of information, reporting, knowledge products, and information from monitoring and evaluation will be in place to ensure project results are innovative, effective and accountable in that respect. The project working very closely with national and local level authorities will ensure the lessons and evaluation findings contribute to development and implementation of effective policy and planning frameworks in the field of disaster and climate management. Following are some of the proposed pathways incorporated into the project design:


10. Risk Analysis (including mitigation methods)


Activity

Risk and probability

Mitigation Measure

Social mobilisation, formation of community groups (PO, VO/CBO groups)

Cannot form PO or CBOs groups because of influence from power elites, strong traditional views on women’s roles and rights.


(medium probability)

Village selection process will be designed to screen out communities where these characteristics are present at extreme levels. Community mobilisation will begin in communities where there are not very powerful elites or very large land holdings.

In selected villages, IRB will explain clearly to all community members, including elites and community leaders, what the objective of the project is to minimize perceived threats to these groups posed by the project activities. As food security is an issue of wide IRB in the region, this is likely to create support.

Community members in some communities not interested to participate in PO, CBOs groups because perceived benefits of group participation less than cost of time spent working in the groups.

(low probability)

Initial facilitation will emphasize the benefits of membership in these groups, and allow groups to manage themselves in a way least disruptive to members.


Note: IRB experience indicates no problem in forming these groups in this region.

Conflict among members within the groups or between group and others in community disrupts activities of the PO and CBOs.

(medium probability)

IRB will receive training in conflict-resolution techniques to defuse these types of problems as part of their initial orientation. The facilitation process during formation of groups is structured in a way to minimize these potential conflicts. IRB longstanding relationships in these regions will be helpful in mitigating conflict.

Disaster Risk

Severe cyclone, tidal surge may damage small investments i.e. death of livestock provided as assets transfer

(medium to high probability)

The project will facilitate processes of early warning and special evacuation for those households who have high risk investments.


Supporting Employment and Income Opportunities

Natural disasters may disrupt project-supported IGAs by destroying productive assets.


(high probability)

Disaster preparedness will be mainstreamed through all activities in this project. Hence all business development plans will need to include disaster preparedness and mitigation planning. This will also influence the selection of IGAs and value chains that will be promoted.

Promoting KAP messages

People do not adopt recommended practices.


(medium probability)

Social Animators and peer group members will promote adoption of practices through ongoing follow-up visits, identifying barriers and helping them to access community and UP resources and facilities. Reflection sessions with others in the community with IRB staff will provide the opportunity to discuss barriers and constraints and devise solutions.

General Program Implementation

Local govt./administration not supportive of project approach


(low probability)

IRB have strong working relationship with local administration structures, and will organise workshops and other contacts with key UP, Upazila, members to fully explain pro-poor and pro-women approach of risk reduction, and benefits of the approach.

IRB will not be able to hire and retain female field staff


(high probability)

This is a problem that all organisations working in Bangladesh face, particularly for projects in remote locations. However, this is changing over time, and IRB and its partners will work together to design appropriate incentives to attract and retain good women staff and keep them motivated. A strong gender equity initiative will run through the program working with men and women staff of IRB.


  1. Value for Money – how will the project achieve it


IRB has a draft definition of value for money that looks at the concept across multiple areas from needs assessment to implementation to M&E; this is awaiting approval by the Board of Directors. Currently IR’s value for money strategy revolves around;

  1. Procurement efficiency. It has been calculated the procurement department at the international office has saved IR over £500,000 in the last two years through improved tendering and scrutiny.

  2. Programmes are developed based on the detailed need prioritisation at the design stage and the same is monitored and are also being looked at in real time evaluations to ensure the effectiveness.

  3. Audit framework. IR has its own internal audit department within the evaluation and audit department which audits all programmes according to a strict framework and reports to an audit committee made up of trustees, an external voluntary expert in accounting and the CEO.

  4. Impact measurement framework. In 2012, IR developed an impact measurement framework to aggregate its global impact against the strategic plan which sets out the priorities of the organisation.

  5. IR has recently been awarded DfID RRF status; which has also helped in refining and mainstreaming the value for money concept across all phases of IR programming.

Value for money can also be demonstrated through DfID funding to IR’s LWHT project in Pakistan. An evaluation was conducted and analysis was drawn against DfID’s Three Es Framework reeffectiveness of the money spent on development projects. The project fulfilled all the demands which were levied on all activities through the above Three Es Principle. The project achieved its targets by more than 100% with the same amount of money. The procurement procedures were followed strictly to achieve the low costs but better quality goods and communities were involved in the selection of beneficiaries. The process of distribution of inputs was transparent


  1. Cross-cutting themes


IRB believes in inclusion in its interventions and it promotes the most vulnerable in a society in terms of their social, economic and political condition.


Empowerment of the most vulnerable:

The proposed project recognises the need to address the rights of women, children, disabled and other excluded groups in disaster preparedness and disaster risk reduction activities. Following the approach of community mobilization and involvement of communities in decision making will ensure ease of implementation and give the sense of ownership to the communities that will ensure long term sustainability. During the awareness raising campaign and community training, efforts will be made to ensure that these families also benefit from the operation and can participate fully. The needs of the people with special needs will also be considered during the design and review of the risk reduction actions plans. The project will also facilitate the process of linkages development and will involve local institutions in the process.


Mainstreaming Disabilities:

The proposed project will establish partnership with relevant national organizations to mainstream disability issues into this program. This partnership will provide technical assistance, and will build the capacity of the project staff and community trainers/ activists to identify disaster related issues of disabled people alongside their capacities that can be included in disaster risk reduction initiatives.


Gender Justice:

IRB will work in partnership with other DRR stakeholders to ensure women not only participate but also have decision making role in the implementation of the disaster risk reduction interventions. The project team will be comprised of the women staff members to ensure the knowledge and experience of women is included at all stages of the program cycle .i.e. from participatory risk assessment to the evaluation stage.


Protecting the Environment:

The project recognises the importance of utilising and protecting natural resources to minimise the negative impact on natural disasters and vice versa. The community activists will aim to improve environmental management practices in order to reduce the risk of climate induced hazards through measures such as reforestation of mangroves and construction of retaining walls etc, while adaptation and mitigation programs will provide technical skills to support this. All environments related issues will be incorporated into our training programmes at community level.


Economic impact:

The direct economic impact of the program will be small and mainly indirect, as the project focuses on low cost disaster reduction initiatives. Improved resilience of the communities will help communities avoid the negative impact on socio-economic conditions in terms of human lives, property, livelihoods, and material resources caused by natural disasters. Also, the community structures organized on disaster risk management will promote bridging the social and economic capital, thus leading to an improved quality of life. Social and economic capital refer to the bondage among the community members on the basis of trust, social norms, and network within and beyond the society which mould the social and economic activities. Islamic Relief mobilization strategy for disaster risk reduction programme provides a draft global framework through which the expected goals are strived.


Standards in Emergencies:

The project will also advocate for the fulfilment of basic rights and minimum standards for disaster-affected populations. Thus, awareness-raising and capacity building initiatives on the adherence to basic rights and standards will enable service providers to maintain the dignity of disaster-affected populations.


It is anticipated that the community members will be able to acquire significant knowledge on raising public awareness and providing training to other community members. The program will be further sustained by replicating these activities in other program areas of IRB and its partners.

  1. Budget



Please See Annex No XXX

1 Level of Disaster resilience within the community can be understood as the capacity to absorb stress or destructive forces through resistance or adaptation and the capacity to manage or maintain basic functions and structures and the capacity to recover after a disaster events, from the Characteristics of a Disaster- resilient Community- A guidance Note by J Twigg, in 2007 for DFID Disaster Risk Reduction Interagency Coordination Group


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14 NOVEMBER 2005 PATRINA BUCHANAN PROJECT MANAGER INTERNATIONAL


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