Creating liveable and inclusive cities for all (LICA)

Context

Bangladesh faces the dual challenge of managing its rapid urbanisation in sustainable ways while also adapting to the enormous impacts of climate change. Urban areas, especially near the coast or along rivers, are severely affected by climate change, for example by flooding, overheating and other extreme weather events. The government of Bangladesh projects that between 2011 and 2050,16-26 million people will be forced to leave their homes and migrate to cities.

Because they are growing so rapidly, cities encounter complex challenges which they are not well equipped to address. The increasing degradation of the urban environment particularly affects valuable "green spaces" (such as public parks, recreation areas, playgrounds, riverbanks) and "blue spaces" (surface waters such as reservoirs, canals, and rivers). Their functions as air filters, floodplains, and drainage areas and the role they play in heat reduction and biodiversity are becoming lost in the dense urbanisation. This is exacerbated by poor management, in which poor urban waste treatment is a key element.

Objective

The ability of local and national governments to promote inclusive and climate-sensitive urban environmental management in selected cities in Bangladesh is improved.

Approach

The project aims to enhance the quality of urban life through improved inclusive environmental management services in selected cities by developing and implementing:

• targeted measures to strengthen the competencies of relevant actors in Bangladesh's growing municipalities, flanked by dialogue and exchange between national and local institutions
• institutional development concepts in the cities Khulna, Satkhira, Rajshahi and Sirajganj tailored to their specific needs and priority strategic measures to improve their urban environmental service provision
• inclusive and gender-sensitive participatory platforms ("Urban Labs") with demonstration projects for environmental management service delivery
• management models based on local experiences to develop and disseminate a national guideline for urban environmental management.

Last update: June 2023