Session Information
32 SES 16, Climate Change, Urban Migration, Development and Organisational Learning
Symposium
Contribution
Bangladesh is a developing country at serious risk from global climate change (Price &Taylor, 2016). As rural land is increasingly salinated and eroded rural people lose livelihoods and homes and there is widespread (an estimated six million people) migration to urban areas. Approximately 70 percent of slum dwellers in the divisional capitals of Khulna and Rajshah are migrants. However, there have been no measures in place in Bangladesh geared to improving the living conditions of climate migrants.
A large number of internationally-based NGOs work within Bangladesh in a range of areas of development, including response to problems caused by climate change with varying degrees of usefulness and success.
Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) is a German Organisation that is working internationally, with a range of operational partners, in development. One of its projects (UMIMCC) is in Bangladesh and addresses the urban management of internal migration due to climate change.
This symposium focuses on the team involved in the UMIMCC project and in particular on the ways it is an organisation engaged in learning in a context of risk.
Risk in this context may be considered in at least four ways.
The project has been created because of an existing state of risk: that of climate change and its human and economic consequences. This is risk that the organisation cannot control but it needs to understand and react to. There are existing and increasing risks involved in the process of urban migration that takes place because of the impact of climate change. It is these that the organisation seeks in some part to address.
There is also risk in working across cultures: how can a German organisation understand and meet the needs of Bangladeshi people?
And related is the risk of working with multiple partners: how are the complexities of Bangladeshi national and local politics to be navigated? how can local entrepreneurs, social services and community activators and beneficiaries be involved? How can cooperation and co-learning be developed?
The symposium brings together three perspectives to examine the organisational learning that occurs in the project in the context of these risks.
At one level the perspectives are defined by role: one is that of the team leader of the project, a grounded, practical and implementational role; another is that of the theoretician, a role that proposes conceptual frameworks through which the work can be investigated; the third is that of the field based researcher, a role that brings an outsider's eye to collecting and analysing evidence.
The three perspectives can also be defined in terms of their cultural biases: one is German and potentially, but not necessarily, euro-centric; one is Bangladeshi and so to some extent that of someone who not only knows the local context but also has serious and long-term investment in the outcomes; one is New Zealander and so to some extent removed from both the international agency and the local context.
However, both because of our collaboration in the investigation and because of our individual previous experiences, there is no absolute demarcation between the perspectives: we acknowledge our positionalities at the same time as we seek to not be limited by them.
Our overall methodological approach is guided by the following overarching question: how can an international NGO work successfully with local people and agencies in managing urban migration caused by climate change? Embedded in the question is an examination of how an organisation learns (and perhaps unlearns): about the problem, about the context, about its partners and beneficiaries and about its processes.
Our approach is predominantly qualitative in design and reflectively narrative in its presentation.
References
Anmol. K & Greenwood, J. (2018). A study on the Role of NGO leadership in the Success of Development Projects in Bangladesh. Paper presented at ECER Conference, Balzano Argyris, C. and Schön, D.A. (1978), Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. Ayers, J. M., Huq, S., Faisal, A. M., & Hussain, S. T. (2014). Mainstreaming climate change adaptation into development: a case study of Bangladesh. WIREs Climate Change, 5, 37-51. Huq, N., Hugé, J., Boon, E., & Gain, A. (2015). Climate Change Impacts in Agricultural Communities in Rural Areas of Coastal Bangladesh: A Tale of Many Stories. Sustainability, 8437-8460. Kabeer, N., Mahmud, S., & Castro, J. (2010). NGOs’ Strategies and the Challenge of Development and Democracy in Bangladesh. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. OECD Policy Brief. (2006). Putting Climate Change Adaptation in the Development Mainstream. OECD. Price, D., Taylor, A. (Directors). (2016). Thirty Million [documentary film]. Christchurch, New Zealand: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) &Global Environment Facility (GEF) United Nations Environment Programme (2012) Annual Report 2011.UNEP. United Nations. (2015). Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015: Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development A/RES/70/1. http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp? symbol=A/RES/70/1&Lang=E
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