Half-day Short Course on Climate Change and Locally-Led Adaptation

On 23 February, 2025, the Department of Environmental Science and Management, under the COLOCAL Project, hosted a half-day short course featuring two compelling presentations on climate change adaptation and an interactive game on social inclusion. With an aim to introduce key aspects of climate change to people from a wide variety of disciplines lacking exposure to these concepts, the event attracted students majoring in economics, computer science, business studies, as well as graduates and professionals.

The first session was taken by Dr. Laura Kuhl, an associate professor from Northeastern University in Boston. It introduced the concepts of increasing disasters, global emissions, the carbon budget, climate financing, and climate justice, as well as the intersections of climate risk with poverty and other industries. She later emphasized how locally-led adaptation can be a possible solution for many of the climatological crises we are facing today.

This was followed by a session on urban adaptation by Abeda Tabassum, a PhD candidate from the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Seoul National University. She shared some of the interesting wind models she is working on while also breaking down key concepts like urban heat island, urban breeze circulation, cool roofs, etc. She also talked candidly about her own graduate school application process and her experiences in Korea, and extended support to any student interested in following a similar path. The final session, conducted by Afsara Binte Mirza and Rawnak Jahan Khan from the International Center for Climate Change and Development, was an interactive game that introduced the ideas of social inclusion to the participants. Each of them received a character card representing a key stakeholder from a cyclone affected rural community. They were then encouraged to play the role of these characters as they attempted to build an action plan for future disaster events. The best performers received books as prizes at the end of the game.

A participant playing the role of a 50-year-old amputee even exclaimed later how this game helped her to gain perspective on the struggles of persons with disabilities that often receive little support in our communities.

Media Coveragehttps://iub.ac.bd/news-and-events/news-archive/2025-February/67c5468dcae97613b98b27ac