Climate Change and Environment

IWM has been working with climate projections and scenarios for different flood and drought management project, drainage modelling, storm surge and sea level rise related research and studies in collaboration with BUET, DOE, BWDB, World Bank, CEIP-I and other government and international organizations for many years. And hence, the idea of starting a full-blown unit focusing solely on climate change research has been a vision of IWM for a long time.

Considering the above issues and as per decision of the 84th meeting of IWM board of Trustees, IWM has recently established a Climate Change Cell with a view to conduct (i) Basic research in the field of Climate Change (ii) Climate Change impact assessment, (iii) Training and capacity building, (iv) Awareness building, (v) Developing local level Climate Change model and provide support to develop Climate Change services in line with Bangladesh situation vi) multi-level collaboration with partners, research institutes, stakeholders and donor organizations. The vision of the Climate Cell is to enable better management of the risk of climate variability and changes and adaptation and mitigation to climate change, through the development and incorporation of science-based climate information and prediction into planning, policy and practice on the global, regional and national scale.

Climate Change Cell of IWM has been initiated from February 2019. Presently the division is working on couple of active projects such as: “GRACERS- Groundwater rejuvenation as climate change resilience for marginalized and gender sensitive Ganges“ with IIT-Bombay, “Groundwater resource assessment and impact of Climate change in coastal area” jointly with Coast, post and Estuary division of IWM for World Bank funded project on , “Joint Cooperation Programme-Bangladesh-the Netherlands” as well as the division is continuously looking for new opportunities to build relation with potential research institutes and clients. Some projects are in the proposal development phase with potential clients such as UK-Hadley Met Centre, DOE and Clarkson University. The cell presently has four employees, headed by Mr. Tarikul Islam (Senior Specialist) and supported by Bushra Monowar Duti (Associate Specialist), Arnob Barua (Junior Engineer) and Reazul Zannah (Junior Engineer).

The area of expertise that is envisaged by the team (but not limited to):

  • Scientific study about the physical phenomena relevant to climate change
  • Climate modeling
  • Bias correction of GCMs
  • Down-scaling climate models
  • Study for Impact on water resources management and socio-economic & environmental condition due to climate change through impact modelling (drought impact assessment, irrigation and drainage modelling, flood assessment, hydrological-hydrodynamic and morphological modelling, cyclone modelling, storm surge modelling, salinity modelling, water quality modelling, pollution modelling, heat transfer modelling, air pollution modelling, noise modelling)
  • Formulating Plans and enabling policies through adaptation and mitigation techniques
  • Social and environmental component of climate change
  • Climate finance and climate change politics