Commonwealth Geographical Bureau Workshops on The Human Consequences of Climate Change

In June 2005, over a two-week period (12- 25 June), the Commonwealth Geographical Bureau (CGB) ran two interesting Workshops in Penang (Malaysia) and Colombo (Sri Lanka) on The Human Consequences of Climate Change.

Both the Workshops drew about 18 participants each who came from several Universities, non-government organizations and the governments within the Commonwealth countries of Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore and Sri Lanka.

In Penang, the joint convenor of the Workshop was the Geography Section, School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia while in Sri Lanka we had the Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts, University of Colombo. We are grateful to Prof Wan Ruslan Ismail, Head of the Geography Section, Universiti Sains Malaysia and Mr Antony Norbert and Prof Jayanthi De Silva (Head of Department) for their great help in organizing both events.

The Workshops were conducted by Dr Mark Pelling, Kings College London, University of London and Associate Professor David Higgitt from the National University of Singapore. They did an outstanding job of getting all the participants actively engaged in the topics. Besides the various lively debates and discussions, many of the participants presented their own national as well as research perspectives on various topics.

In both the countries, we had a one-day field trip. In Penang, the participants were taken to the Waterworks Company (Perbadanan Bekalan Air Pulau Pinang Sdn Bhd, the constituency (Bayan Lepas) of the Prime Minister for a briefing and got to see on hand flood-prone areas. While in Colombo, we were briefed by a non-government organization Sarvodaya on their post-Tsunami work and got to see first hand the devastated 2004 tsunami areas – Hikkaduwa, Sinigama, Parliya, Telvatta, Kalutara and Wadduwa (near Galle). The train that took 1,500 lives was still there and all the ruined buildings were still standing. We saw many refugee tents and thatched huts and spoke with the many survivors. We also visited one of the fishing villages that was almost wiped out by the December 26, 2004 Tsunami. The sight of the devastation was a sobering reminder to all of us of nature’s fury.

Our Workshops also had several guest lecturers from other disciplines, non-government organizations and government departments. Each Workshop had a farewell dinner. In Colombo, all the participants as well as lecturers gave a rousing concert of varied songs.

Every participant was given a certificate of their successful attendance and there was a lot of photo-taking to capture the interaction and friendship amongst all the participants. Click here to see more photos of the event.

We are grateful to the Commonwealth Foundation for sponsoring the Workshop and look forward to next year for another Workshop, hopefully on water problems and issues.

Policy Workshop on Bangladesh Country Almanac (BCA)

A day long Policy Workshop on Bangladesh Country Almanac was held on June 28, 2004 at the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC), Dhaka. The version 2.0 of the BCA was presented and followed by discussions and comments.

The BCA is a simple ‘all in one’ GIS database, probably the unique database of the country in the public domain packaged in a very user-friendly manner with requiring any special GIS software to run it.

The participants of the workshop included researchers, extension people, policymakers and administrators. They highly praised the joint effort of the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council, Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, Bangladesh Soil Resources Institute under the initiative of CIMMYT Bangladesh in developing the unique database which will be of immense use to policy planners, researchers and administrators and environmentalists.

The Bangladesh Geographical Society Annual General Meeting

 The 49th Annual General Meeting and Daylong Seminal was held on 29 June 2004 in the Department of Geography & Environment, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Seminar was inaugurated by Professor S.M.A. Faiz, the Vice Chancellor of the University and the Keynote paper on Estimation of Agricultural Land Carrying Capacity in Bangladesh: lessons Learned and Policy Options was present by Professor A.Q.M. Mahbub of the Department of Geography & Environment, University of Dhaka.