Staff Correspondent :

Under the Urban Low Emissions Development Strategy (Urban LEDS) II project to make a “Climate Action Plan” for Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC) a Shared Learning Dialogue (SLD) jointly organized by ICLEI South Asia and RCC held on 23rd February (Sunday) at 10:30 am in the Sarit Dutta Gupta conference room of RCC Building.

The workshop was chaired by Chief Engineer Md. Ashraful Haque and Secretary Abu Hayat Md. Rahmatullah. Also, Senior Program Coordinator for ICLEI South Asia Bedoshruti Sadhukhan, Nikhil Kolsepatil (Manager-Energy & Climate), Md. Jubaer Rashid (Country Representative of ICLEI South Asia in Bangladesh) and Abdulla - Al Kafy (Project Officer ICLEI South Asia - Rajshahi) giver their speech in the workshop.

Also RCC Executive Engineer Md. Golam Murshed and Md Noor Islam, RCC Panel Mayor-1 and 12th no ward councilor Sariful Islam Babu were present in the workshop. In addition, Executive Director of the Barind Multipurpose Development Authority Md. Iqbal Hossain, Executive Engineer of the Department of Public Health & Engineering Md. Rokonuzzaman, Divisional Forest Officer Ahmed Naimur Rahman participated in the workshop.

At the workshop, RCC Chief Engineer, Md. Ashraful Haque said RCC is working to make the city environment-friendly and an example of a model city for other cities. Under the Zero Soil project, RCC is planting a huge number of trees all around the city and planned to conserve 19 ponds of the city, for maintaining ecological biodiversity and reduce the future climate change senior of the city added by Chief Engineer.
He also said that ICLEI South Asia is helping RCC by implementing various projects since 2009 to make RCC green and resilient to climate change. He also hopes that ICLEI South Asia will help RCC to implement more environmental friendly projects to make the city sustainable and climate-resilient in the near future.

Senior Program Coordinator for ICLEI South Asia Bedoshruti Sadhukhan said in the previous SLD conducted on 4th August 2019, stakeholders from Rajshahi identified and prioritized six fragile urban systems that were being impacted due to climate change: water supply; health; biodiversity; economy; solid waste management; and wastewater. Based on these fragile urban systems, a "Vulnerability Assessment Report" has been developed. On the basis of the report, the likelihood and consequences of the impact of climate change identified at the highest risk are water supply, health, biodiversity, and economy, while the solid waste management system faces high risk and the wastewater system is at medium risk. All six fragile systems were found to be most vulnerable in Ward 17 in Rajshahi.
Also, Rajshahi city’s Green House Gas (GHG) emissions inventory on various sectors such as residential buildings, commercial and institutional buildings, manufacturing/construction industries, transportation, and waste is discussed based on the data collected for the years 2013 - 2018. On the basis of the report, manufacturing/construction with a share of 28% is the highest contributor to the overall GHG emissions followed by the transport sector, residential, waste, and commercial/institutional sector, with an emission share of about 24%, 23%, 20%, and 5% respectively.

Participants in the SLD workshop said that there is no alternative to preserve the water bodies and creating more green areas in the city to reduce the climate change impact and make the city eco-friendly .

Abdulla - Al Kafy (Project officer of ICLEI South Asia - Rajshahi) said, under the preparation of climate action plan for Rajshahi city two projects “Open space plan” (start from 1st week of March) for RCC area and Energy audit (start from 1st week of April 2020) of RCC building will kick off soon.