The conference of Parties-26 (COP26) is being held from 31 October to 12 November 2021. It is the 26th meet that started from the year 1995.COP is an annual event and has got importance after COP21 where a global agreement was signed by all countries of the world to reduce the human made CO₂ emission below 2° c, if not at 1.5° c by 2030. The COP26 is being attended by all most all countries of the world comprising heads of the states, ministers, bureaucrats, technocrats, scientists, environment and climate activists, religious leaders, NGO representatives and so on.

Bangladesh plays a key role in COP26 and recognized as very influential to make the event successful. Our Honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been declared one of the four most influential personality to bring out results from the COP26 (BBC, 2021). Hasina, not only for her country but is giving lead of Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), a group of 48 countries spanning four continents who are supposed that facing existential threat. She stressed the need of adequate support both financially and by expertise for the climate changes suffering countries. She pointed out “the climate emergency is global, yet it does not affect everyone equally, and extreme sufferers are the least to at best middle-income countries” (COP-26 event report, 1 Nov. 2021). Prime Minister Hasina forwarded four strong points in the COP26. These are:

• Major emitters must submit ambitious National Determined Contributions (NDC);
• The developed countries should fulfil their commitments of providing 100 billion USD annually with a 50:50 balance between adaptation and mitigation;
• The developed countries should disseminate clean and green technologies at affordable costs to the most vulnerable countries; and
• Loss and Damage should be addressed and global sharing of responsibilities should be ensured for climate changes.

Hasina highlighted the situation of the women in the state of climate changes, mentioning “structural inequalities in human society along with inherent social customs are causing disproportionate impacts of climate changes on women” (COP-26 event report, 2 Nov.2021. She called upon especially the women leaders for taking bold and decisive actions in the COP26 for a global compact to build communities resilient to climate changes in a way where everyone – both men and women – can participant equally.

Bangladesh is the 7th most climate risk suffering country out of the ten. Every year it is causing displaced of near about 50,000 households due to river erosion and etc induced by climate changes. The State Minister of Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief of Bangladesh has voiced about this critical crisis and mentioned that more than 10 million households in Bangladesh would be climate refugees by next decade if we fail to

address the issue effectively, and for that the country needs around 145 billion USD per year.

Climate change issues once it was an environmental aspect, then it turned to be a development concern, and presently is an issue of justice and Bangladesh is rightly expressing that in a very clear and loud voice in the COP26 under the strong leadership of our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

PROVATi3 project of LGED is a project which is truly aligned with the stress of our Prime Minister to build ‘resilient community’ to cope with the climate changes. The target people of the project, like Joinuddin from Gaibandha, live in high risk of extreme flood and river erosion areas of Brahmaputra- Teesta Basin. Joinuddin’s family has been displaced for 14 times being affected by massive river erosion. Where he lives now with 120 households almost 70 of them have experienced the similar miseries. To his knowledge, from previous settlement near about 30% households migrated to Dhaka or Chattogram losing all they had. He is struggling and strivings best to live in the char even being dislocated a few times. The struggle is immense and recurring. PROVATi³ project with financial assistance of IFAD and GOB is trying to build the resilience of the community through a few supports, such as : giving them access to robust road infrastructures for improved connectivity to markets; providing working opportunities against wages and supporting them with alternative climate smart adaptive livelihood technologies for better investments of the hard earning; introducing gender transformative approach to engage woman and man together in households to practice equal participation for the wellbeing of the family and to build a responsive inclusive society; constructing flood shelters in the locality so that they can have refuge in time of extreme flood, devising community centric flood warning system accompanied with advisory services to save their lives and resources by taking timely preparedness. Project will arrange wage for works through Labor Contracting Society (LCS) for around 15,000 poor households of which more than 50% will be women headed families, around 500,000 households, direct and indirect, will be received better early flood warning services; and 6,000 households live in the highest flood risk zones will get access to shelters during extreme flood. Project has taken all out efforts to maximize the scope and finding ways to make the people connected with all support services like line-departments through mobile phones for getting advisory services in needs for better management of livelihoods. Besides, considering the recurring displacements, project is planning to introduce flood adaptive prefabricated market structure, and the skill to build low-cost housing that can quickly dismantled and be moved with them so that that can be saved from flood damage and rebuild later after receding of flood water.

The project is being implemented in partnership with BUET for research in building resilient structures; WFP for mapping the state of poverty and nutrition; DDM for introducing early flood warning system ;and NGO-MFIs for providing technologies for sustainable livelihoods and giving access to micro-credit facilities to make the community of 360,000 direct households resilient and acquire sustainable livelihoods.

We are hopeful that COP26 would bring some positive results for the countries have been suffering the most from human created climate changes – particularly by developed countries. JUSTICE, ‘’If not now, when ?’’The question has rightly posed by the youth in the COP26 summit, and Bangladesh is at forefront to advocate that.