2 results
25 - Sustainable development in Bangladesh: Bridging the SDGs and climate action
- from Part II - Sustainable Development: Challenges and Opportunities
- Edited by Pak Sum Low
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- Book:
- Sustainable Development: Asia-Pacific Perspectives
- Published online:
- 23 December 2021
- Print publication:
- 13 January 2022, pp 327-338
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Summary
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or the 2030 Agenda, is the successor of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and has a timeline ranging from the year 2015 to 2030. Consisting of 17 goals and 169 targets, the SDGs aim to address the root causes of some of the most pressing environmental, social, and economic problems being faced by the world.
For Bangladesh, a country that performed particularly well on the MDGs, the SDGs present a great opportunity to build on the progress made with the MDGs and make transformational changes that can help boost the country’s overall development. The highly ambitious SDGs have 17 goals touching all sectors, from education and health to building sustainable infrastructure. Although the wide scope of the agenda has the potential to see greater change, it also faces substantial barriers. For Bangladesh, some of the main barriers include the effects of climate change, which can potentially offset the achievements of many of these SDG targets, and another is the lack of funding mechanisms for implementing necessary actions.
The impacts of climate change will be of concern for a country like Bangladesh, which is already vulnerable to environmental effects. Given the influence the Climate Agenda and the 2030 Agenda have on each other, they play a significant role in the success of one another. As such, while addressing the SDGs it is of key importance to implement national plans and policies that incorporate SDG targets as well as climate action.
Financing the SDGs is also a critical issue for Bangladesh, as most of the funding needs to be from domestic resources. It is estimated that implementation of the SDGs will cost Bangladesh on average about US$66.32 billion annually between 2017 and 2030. For the implementation to be successful, it needs a variety of financial resources: public and private, national and international, concessional and non-concessional. It is also important to establish a framework that can ensure that climate finance is new and additional to official development assistance (ODA) pledges and addresses issues of financial accountability and good governance.
For Bangladesh to be as successful in achieving the Sustainability Development Goals, as it was the Millennium Development Goals, the county will need to treat climate change as a cross-cutting issue that will affect the ability to attain any of the other goals. Only through developing national plans of action that are focused on climate resilience and implementing effective financial mechanisms will it be possible for Bangladesh to fulfil these transformational goals.
Eight - The Pandemic and Food Insecurity in Small Cities of the Global South: A Case Study of Noapara in Bangladesh
- Edited by Brian Doucet, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Rianne van Melik, Pierre Filion, University of Waterloo, Ontario
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- Book:
- Volume 1: Community and Society
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 13 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 22 July 2021, pp 83-92
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Summary
Introduction
The unfolding economic and social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed fault lines in existing food systems in both developed (Lawrence, 2020) and developing countries (Rahman et al, 2020). Bangladesh, a densely populated and rapidly urbanizing nation of roughly 180 million people went into a ‘general holiday with restrictions on movement’ (referred to internationally as lockdown) on March 26, 2020. The majority of economic and social activities within the country ceased as a consequence. The lockdown was eventually relaxed on June 1, 2020, with specific instructions to maintain social distancing. As of September 7, 2020, Bangladesh had 325,157 cases of COVID-19 and 4,479 people had died from the virus (Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), 2020). A rapid-response research conducted by the Power and Participation Research Centre and BRAC Institute of Governance and Development of Bangladesh (Rahman et al, 2020) in April 2020 in Bangladesh observed a steep drop in income leading to a contraction in food consumption as evidenced by reduction in food expenditure by 28 percent for urban informal settlement respondents and 22 percent for rural respondents. Similar to experiences in other countries (Despard et al, 2020), the lockdown resulted in an income shock, particularly for the urban poor.
While there are reports of how communities in major cities have been impacted (Taylor, 2020), little is known about the lived experiences of residents in smaller cities and how food systems and food security in these towns were impacted. Indeed, small and mid-sized cities remain academically and professionally ignored and unexplored despite the fact that the world's urban majority reside in those cities (Satterthwaite, 2017; Ruszczyk et al, 2021). The relationship between food security, food systems, and sustainability also needs engaged consideration within these small cities (Mackay, 2019). Understanding this relationship is crucial because urban poverty and food insecurity are inter-related. Tacoli (2019) explains that most urban residents not only need to purchase the majority of their food but, unlike in rural areas, it is their main expenditure. Local governments in small cities also have curtailed capacity, minimal funding under their control, and often lack political power to fulfill their responsibilities. These pre-existing socio-economic conditions indicate that food security and food systems in small cities were also likely impacted by the pandemic-induced lockdown.