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Case Study: Academic/NGO Collaboration to Understand Climate Change and Disaster Resilience Implementation in Bagerhat District, Bangladesh

Pays
Bangladesh
Sources
Harvard Univ.
Date de publication
Origine
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Vincenzo Bollettino, Sarah Ferguson

THE CASE

Helen Ware, Palash Haldar, Enzo Bollettino, Patrick Vinck, and Zakir Hossain are in an annual work planning meeting. They represent different organizations working toward a similar mission – enhancing the resilience of coastal communities in Bangladesh to the effects of natural disasters and climate change. Palash and Helen work for Concern Worldwide, a large, international non-governmental organization (NGO) that has been working in Bangladesh since 1972 to strengthen development, resilience, and disaster response (1). Zakir is the founder and Executive Director of Jagrata Juba Shangha (JJS), a Bangladeshi NGO that has worked in the coastal region of Bangladesh since 1985 to enhance resilience and support development efforts (2). Enzo and Patrick are researchers at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI), a research initiative based at Harvard University in the United States, which recently received a grant to support research to enhance resilience in Bangladesh (see Annex 1 for the mission statements of these organizations at the time of this project).

These three organizations were brought together to implement a joint project to enhance coastal community resilience in Bagerhat District, Bangladesh. Within the project, Concern and JJS jointly implement activities within these coastal communities, while HHI’s role is to conduct research to support these programs and to advance global understanding of what makes households and communities resilient. Each organization has different capacities, interests, and activities, leading the group to wonder – how can an academic actor support local and international NGOs to enhance coastal community resilience?

IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM

The team lands on an idea – coordination and collaboration. Bangladesh is unique in its rich history of NGO engagement. The country is home to over 6,559 NGOs and NGO branches supporting development, health, microfinance, livelihoods, and other development and disaster relief and preparedness efforts (3). Recent studies of disaster response efforts in the region found that, while many government, INGOs, and local NGOs mobilized to provide disaster relief following devastating cyclones in 2007 and 2009, lack of coordination between actors hindered efficient delivery of services (4,5). Enhancing the capacity of actors on the ground to integrate resilience into their programs, and creating or strengthening platforms to support coordination, could be an important first step toward strengthening program delivery and, ultimately, community resilience.

But who were these organizations, and how were they collaborating and coordinating already? Before designing interventions to enhance capacity and support coordination among these actors, HHI, Concern, and JJS needed a more in-depth understanding of the current network. Were organizations coordinating at all? If so, what types of groups collaborated? Did they see value in coordination and collaboration? Patrick and Enzo’s colleagues at HHI had recently completed network analyses of humanitarian actors in eight countries as part of a program evaluation. They suggested that a similar approach could be used in this context to help Concern, JJS, and HHI better understand the implementation environment and design targeted programs to improve coordination and strengthen capacity.