Looking back in time to Agenda 21, the detailed action plan that came out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) better known as Earth Summit, the term civil society was not even mentioned. However, that doesn’t mean civil society was excluded from Agenda 21. There was the constant reference to actors that constitute civil society i.e. non-governmental organisations, local communities, associations, and so on and so forth. Building upon Agenda 21, the global environmental discourse further expanded into territories of greater thematic concentrations. Against this backdrop, this research sets out to examine civil society’s role in responding to climate change in the context of Bangladesh with a focus on the southwest region. The following three sections are about a conceptual framework, research methodology, and climate change scenario of the country respectively. Then there are four sections that constitute a case study of the Tidal River Management (TRM) movement. The initial outcomes of the polders were quite rewarding both economically and socially. Daily tidal intrusion became a thing of the past and floods were effectively brought under control. For the following two decades, agricultural output multiplied significantly with successive bumper productions of rice.
Authors: Haque, Kazi Nurmohammad Hossainul; Chowdhury, Faiz Ahmed; Chakma, Rigan
Type: Working Paper
Year: 2013
