Taking care of the environment and the lives that rely on it
UNHCR Bangladesh is among the operations leading the way in developing novel solutions to address climate change and the human impact on the environment.
By Amy Lynn Smith — Independent Writer + Strategist
As the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) launches the Innovation, Environment and Resilience Fund, we’re exploring — and listening to — environmental innovators at UNHCR and its partners. The goal is to learn about their responses to global climate and environmental crises, and demonstrate how stewardship of the environment is crucial for the advancement of human rights. This is the first in a two-part series about work being undertaken in Bangladesh. The second part is available here.
The downpour went on for a week: unrelenting, intense rain that caused rapidly rising, massive flooding, forcing people to evacuate their homes — plastic-covered bamboo shelters — with little notice. This was July 2021 in Bangladesh, where UNHCR had to relocate 20,000 of the one million refugees living in a settlement in Cox’s Bazar within just a few hours. The Rohingya people living there, who were forced to flee Myanmar to escape persecution in 2017, once again had to uproot themselves, making urgent decisions about which of their possessions to carry with them as they ran for their lives.
Flooding isn’t unusual in Bangladesh, which faces many climate extremes. Every year, thousands of people in Bangladesh face the harsh realities of cyclones, monsoons, flooding, landslides, and other natural disasters that can destroy homes, livelihoods, and the lives of people, animals, and natural resources.
“Bangladesh presents the case of a country that’s very prone to disasters, and the vast scale of the operation here prompted us to prepare for preventive and response measures to put us on the right footing from day one,” says Johannes van der Klaauw, the Representative at UNHCR Bangladesh. “Since 2021, UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations have done a great deal to invest in caring for the environment of this host country while continuing to protect and assist the Rohingya people while they are living here.”
UNHCR Bangladesh must, by necessity, prioritize environmental factors. But the work the operation is doing can inspire any UNHCR operation to consider their own surrounding environment and the steps needed to protect it, for everyone’s sake.
According to van der Klaauw, the work in Bangladesh has involved both long-term planning and rapid response when the need arises. For example, after addressing the immediate emergency of the flooding, UNHCR Bangladesh commissioned a watershed assessment to identify areas most likely to experience surface erosion and damage to the surrounding habitat. This information is being used for risk reduction and modeling potential future scenarios, and was shared with other humanitarian actors in Bangladesh to inform activities and services being provided in the camp, making the response more efficient and safe.
UNHCR Bangladesh’s work has also led to the formation of partnerships with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), nature conservancy groups, and the Bangladesh government, as well as the displaced people living in the settlement and the host community. Everyone involved shares an understanding of the need for environmental innovation to create a stronger, safer community. After all, people can’t live without the environment and the environment can’t survive if people don’t protect it.
Nurturing mutually beneficial coexistence
In the dark of the night, shelters in the Cox’s Bazar settlement shook with the terrifying trumpet of Asian elephants, whose migration paths were disrupted by the significant expansion of the settlement in August 2017. The elephants continued to follow the path on which their instincts took them, leading to human-elephant encounters, and in some cases to the tragic death of people or these magnificent beasts. The deforestation necessary to erect the settlement also changed the elephants’ habitat, and the cookstoves burning the wood gathered in the process created pollution — thick smoke that residents of the settlement were taking in with every breath from the time the fires were lit until they burned out.
UNHCR Bangladesh’s responses to issues like these have been myriad, such as deploying the use of cleaner energy to power cookstoves, which reduces both pollution and the deforestation that isn’t new but was exacerbated by the establishment of the settlement. The operation has also used “nature-based solutions” — planting vegetation that’s known to stabilize and improve soil, including more trees. In addition, UNHCR Bangladesh assists the work of one of its partners, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with mitigation strategies to protect both the endangered Asian elephants and the residents of the settlement and the host community.
“The host community and the Rohingya people are similarly affected in the same place where they’re living, so we work together on this,” van der Klaauw says. “We worked to re-green the area after establishing the settlement, to both keep nature intact and to find ways to better prevent, if not respond to, natural disasters.”
He adds that UNHCR Bangladesh’s work includes addressing climate change issues, which means adapting to an ever-changing climate with solutions to reduce risks. “We don’t do it in isolation,” he says, “because we learn from what Bangladesh as a country has developed by joining forces and creating innovative techniques, and they share their expertise.”
Van der Klaauw sees that funding from donors is decreasing due to the amount of time the Rohingya people have been in Bangladesh so far and the need to assist other people forced to flee, such as Ukrainians. This makes a fund intended to support initiatives to protect the environment and conserve energy more necessary than ever.
As UNHCR urges all of its country operations to find solutions to the realities of global climate change and environmental degradation, UNHCR Bangladesh serves as a model for creating partnerships — essential when working at such a massive scale, in UNHCR’s largest settlement of displaced people — and both studying and implementing solutions that protect people, animals, and the natural environment.
“From the time the emergency started in 2017, we knew we’d have to respond to our use of so many natural resources in Bangladesh,” says van der Klaauw. “We gathered data to start making plans, drawing on lessons learned from other operations. By 2018 or 2019, when we saw the first effects of the arrival on the climate, the environment, and the habitat, we started introducing solutions. We had no choice but to do it.”
In addition to working closely with the host community in Cox’s Bazar, UNHCR Bangladesh has involved the Rohingya people in developing community-based solutions.
“Many people in this region are ecologically-minded — they’re very conscious of the force of nature and the ecological impact of human action,” van der Klaauw says. “This is an area where we can make a difference in the lives of refugees themselves and give them a voice.”
Helping nature and people flourish
Especially on the periphery near the forests, wildlife of all kinds wanders into the Cox’s Bazar settlement: birds, foxes, reptiles such as turtles and snakes, and more. Like the elephants following the path of their instincts, people’s instinctive reaction can be to capture and kill the animals, especially if they seem dangerous. If children find birds or small reptiles, they sometimes tie them up and play with them like pets. The creatures often meet a sad end the children surely didn’t intend.
But the refugees living in the settlement are learning to coexist with the wildlife — thanks in part to Rohingya youth who are taking an active role in protecting the environment in their temporary home. IUCN recognized the many talents of the Rohingya community in Bangladesh, and as part of engaging them in education about environmental protection, it established the Youth Environmental Program in 2019. What began as a pilot is now a full-fledged programme of 13 Youth Environment Teams made up of 10-members each — five boys and five girls — who are trained and encouraged to develop solutions.
Samia Akter is a 14-year-old who arrived in Bangladesh from Myanmar in 2017. She joined one of IUCN’s Youth Environment Teams in 2021. She and a friend were eager to work with plantation, wildlife, and other environmental issues.
“Last year, our team ran an awareness campaign regarding wildlife protection,” Akter explains. “We made posters by drawing pictures of wildlife and how people should treat wildlife — and IUCN printed our hand-drawn pictures as posters. We also called meetings with people in the settlement and went door to door, talking to them about different wildlife that are present in this area. We told them why and how we should protect and conserve them.”
Akter says it makes her proud to see changes in the community.
“Just a few months ago, a woman spotted a large snake when she was on her way to fetch water,” she explains. “She immediately informed us, and with the help of IUCN we rescued the snake and released it safely back into the forest.”
Women and girls don’t attend public meetings in the settlement alongside men. But because there are female youth members — a deliberate decision on IUCN’s part, to engage more young girls in activities — they are able to talk to them about these issues. Plus, Akter gets to spend time learning with other young people.
“I feel happy to be engaged in such works,” she says. “At first, people didn’t want to listen to us, but now we see people are paying more attention to our work and are more interested in saving the wildlife and taking care of the trees planted here.”
The work of these youth volunteers may seem like a small thing, but every contribution makes a difference — and every step UNHCR Bangladesh takes to protect and improve the natural environment helps not only the people living in the settlement but the host community as well. Ecosystems with greater diversity are more resilient and productive, which means they provide more water, wood, and food sources.
Some of the work of UNHCR Bangladesh and its partners is even having compound positive effects. For example, UNHCR introduced liquified petroleum gas (LPG) to replace the wood families were using to cook in the settlement (see story two in this series). Not only is LPG a cleaner form of energy that reduces deforestation, it’s improving the safety of Rohingya women.
“Women had to go out and cut down firewood, and they had to walk for long stretches and were often harassed or sexually assaulted,” van der Klaauw says. “Because they can stay at home, they are less exposed to gender-based violence and also don’t have to leave their children at home alone.”
Protecting refugees is a complex issue, made even more challenging everywhere by climate change. This is especially true in inhospitable climates like Bangladesh, where the next massive flood could be just around the corner. As a result of its ongoing efforts, the operation there is increasingly well-prepared not only to respond in an emergency but to reduce the risk of harm to people and the environment. By embracing the idea that people and nature rely on each other for survival, UNHCR Bangladesh demonstrates how protecting the environment also protects people.
Part two in this series explores environmental projects and pilots implemented by UNHCR Bangladesh. For more information on the Innovation, Environment and Resilience Fund, visit the Fund website.
