The First Annual National Conference on Urban Resilience is being organized by International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) at Independent University Bangladesh (IUB), and Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN), Bangladesh. The inaugural session was opened by keynote speaker Mr. John I. Carruthers, Director of Sustainable Urban Planning Program at George Washington University. Mr. Carruthers expressed his concern that planning is not just about perspective or autocracy, but rather the choice we have as a society to find solutions, by weighing cost and benefit, for people with greater needs. The opening session also saw the likes of Honourable Vice Chancellor Professor Omar Rahman who emphasized his concerns for family planning as an integral part of resilience in the urban context. Dr. Saleemul Huq concluded the inaugural by saying that this would be the first of many urban conferences to come, where visionaries can establish ideas and knowledge to better understand the importance of better understanding urban development.
The first plenary session was hosted by Concern worldwide with the goal to have a discourse with Honourable Mayors, Members of Parliament and Urban stakeholders to have an open discourse on how to implement SDGs better in the greater urban context.
The plenary session was followed by three parallel sessions. UNDP hosted the session on Ensuring Climate Vulnerability Assessments that influence Policy and Practice, Care Bangladesh hosted “Inclusive approach to urban resilience in Bangladesh” and Habitat for Humanity hosted the topic on “Building resilience in Urban Slum Settlements”.
It was interesting to see dialogue amongst stakeholders and participants, the keys points from these sessions were to have a more transparent dialogue between stakeholders, government officials and development workers and how to move forward from the current status quo for a more better and resilient urban cities for the betterment of people.
The second plenary session of Conference was hosted by ACCCRN-ICCCCAD. The main initiative behind this session was to Introduce ACCCRN and engages peoples in ACCCRN network. The country director of ACCCARN Sarder Shafiqul Alam represented the ACCCRN activaties and the point of engagements and the potentiality of this network. He also mentioned that this network is currently having 100 members in Bangladesh.
Dr. Saleemul Huq the director of ICCCAD announced that the network has just started its journey in Bangladesh and with the hope to take the urban practitioners and experts under one platform and disseminate their knowledge to the policy makers and interested private sector.
