“Adopting climate friendly innovative, sustainable, and inclusive agriculture practices will be critical to promote prosperity and foster inclusiveness development of Bangladesh”, Honorable Director, Field Services Wing, Department of Agricultural Extension, AKM Monirul Alam, said in a virtual webinar on Adaptive Agriculture to Tackle Climate Change organized by ICCO Cooperation (Part of Cordaid) Funded by the European Union (EU) on recently .
Among others, Olga Speckhardt, Head of Global Insurance Solutions at Syngenta Foundation; Ataus Sopan Malik, Managing Director at AR Mallik Seeds, Ana Perez Aponte, Development Director at Inclusive Business Sweden were also present as panelists, a press release said.,
Koen EVERAERT, Team Leader – Food & Nutrition Security and Sustainable Development at the Delegation of the European Union to Bangladesh provided special remarks during the webinar, where he reflected that EU’s future programming will focus on Social Protection where nutrition will be mainstreamed. Social protection can involve the livelihoods opportunities of poor people; resilience; safety net programs; impacts of climate change; etc. of course the climate smart technology can be included, if this is promoted the farmers can have more productivity and change their lives towards sustainable livelihood opportunities.
During the webinar, speakers also said that new ideas on climate resilient agriculture, environment friendly saline tolerant/ flood-tolerant crops to increase production, accessible and reliable climate information among farmers, climate insurance, and private sector engagement are pivotal for adaptive agriculture to tackle climate change in Bangladesh. Through this webinar, the speakers also urged to consider multi-stakeholder collaboration to ensure an enabling environment for agri-innovation for adaptation to climate change.
Sustained Opportunities for Nutrition Governance (SONGO), funded by the European Union aims to improve maternal and child nutrition. This is a five-year-long project, implemented by ICCO Cooperation (Part of Cordaid) and RDRS Bangladesh. The project is being implemented in 18 unions, under 6 Upazilas of Kurigram D and Gaibandha districts, reaching 112,000 households directly. The project will work for strengthening the local nutrition governance mechanism at Upazila level.
