Friendship develops locally-led adaptation solutions to empower marginalized people to transform their lives and reach their full potential from Bangladesh, a country facing the most pressing of climate-induced humanity’s challenges.
Friendship’s integrated actions that contribute to climate adaptation are deeply embedded within communities, considering the local eco-systems that they are in, and thereby work towards their opportunity to live with dignity and hope.
For the last 20 years, Friendship operates in the extremely poor and isolated, riverine areas of the Jamuna river in the north of Bangladesh, exposed to recurrent floods and river erosion. The other area of work is in the southern coastal belt of the Bay of Bengal, exposed to the effects of cyclones, soil drinking-water salinization, and the rise in sea-level.
All solutions for climate adaptation have been conceived and developed hand in hand by Friendship and the voices of the local communities that need to be heard in the international arena.
This short documentary shows a selection of those solutions, specifically. floating hospitals; dismountable schools; green technology including solar power; oval-shaped raised plinths with cluster villages for displaced people; the Friendship Transition Fund; and finally, community-initiated disaster risk reduction and adapted agricultural techniques. It also makes clear that this is the momentum needed to scale these solutions to other communities in-country and across the world, making Bangladesh the: ground zero to climate adaptation
Published in collaboration with FRIENDSHIP NGO.