Members’ Publication

A complete guide for children with picture on 'Road Safety Rules.'

This book encourages children to work on environmental awareness.

A huge amount of wastes are generated from the kitchen markets every day and these are not properly managed. Most of the kitchen market wastes are organic wastes and there is huge opportunity of converting these organic wastes into resources like composting of waste, producing biogas and electricity generation. At present wastes are just dumped in landfills which require huge land. There is no intermediary systems in practiced like recycling, incineration, composting, converting into other resources. Countries like Bangladesh with a small land and huge population have to suffer for the issue of waste management. This study is conducted on Kitchen Market Waste Management in Dhaka City Corporation and the study areas were Bonolota (New Market) kitchen market and Mirpur 1 kitchen market. This study tries to show the present waste management system of kitchen markets based on case study and also tries to provide some waste management systems that can be used to manage kitchen market wastes.

It is very likely that climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme events such as floods, flash floods, storms, heat and cold waves, riverbank erosion, and drought in the river basin of Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region. This could mean detrimental impacts to the poor and marginal people in the lower Teesta basin (LTB) in Bangladesh. Though adaptation involves financial costs, the farmers' practicing adaptation in LTB experience diminished crop loss and damage. This study was aimed at assessing the promising adaptation practices, their economic return, and social welfare in the LTB through an extended cost-benefit analysis. The study suggests that among the adaptations, shallow tube-well (STW) based irrigation practice in both sandy and loamy soil has the highest marginal adaptation cost (MAC) but the lowest benefit-cost ratio (BCR). The deep tube-well (DTW) based irrigation practice generates superior benefits to the farmers compared to the STW based farming due to initial establishment by the government which is very expensive. Maize farming as an alternate and less resource consumptive cropping produces nearly five times higher economic benefits than the costs which can be acknowledged as the most profitable and resilient adaptation option in the LTB. Though MAC is relatively low for the short-duration variety (SDV) rice among the promising adaptations, its economic profitability is 62% lower than that of the maize cultivation. However, having higher BCR the maize cultivation generates US$86 higher welfare to the farmers than the SDV rice which may strengthen the farmer's preference of maize cultivation over the SDV rice. It can be stated with high confidence that strategic adaptation planning, soft credit, technological advancement, and subsidized agricultural inputs will encourage the farmers to carry out adaptation options which may reduce climate-induced loss and damages for the farmers and build socio-economic resilience in the LTB and other similar areas of South Asia.

Dhaka is one of the largest megacities in the world with huge population. With time this city experiences large scale urban development and is facing several urban challenges in terms of basic urban services, transportation system, water supply and sanitation, waste management and housing due to informal urbanization. Because of centralized service facilities and income opportunities the migrant population is increasing with time drastically with their limited affordability of housing and other public services. The immediate consequence of this is the growth of unhygienic slums and squatter settlements. Several development plans as well as policies were formulated to control the urbanization growth and different policy approaches such as eviction, resettlement and upgrading were adopted to deal with informal settlements of Dhaka. These policies approaches were not very effective, because the scale of the problems is very large and the problems are interconnected with complex phenomenon. To address such problems various initiatives have been taken at different scale both in abroad and local scale by different agencies. Based on their essences the regulatory suggestions considering urbanization and informal settlement issues of Dhaka are recommended on this paper understanding the existing situation.

Balancing the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental is a complex task. Creating the conditions for sustainability is precisely an attempt to bridge these three dimensions of sustainable development. However, reducing carbon emission and sustainable development are closely allied. Maintaining a low carbon growth path consequently makes a city more efficient, livable and eventually sustainable. The challenges are rather more complex for ever-growing metropolises to make and maintain a healthy balance among carbon emission reduction and sustainable development. Hong Kong, one of the most densely populated cities with a very high population-land ratio and world's most significant financial center [13], faces considerable challenges to promote sustainability in real terms. The government of HKSAR has already put much effort to encourage sustainable development in Hong Kong ranging from formulating “Council for Sustainable Development”, “Sustainable Development Fund (SDF)” to stimulating public awareness as well as integrating community participation toward the promotion of sustainable development [5]. Alongside, to maintain a healthy balance between the mounting economic growth and urban sustainability of Hong Kong, a clear understanding of the complex nature of sustainable development and the intertwined nexus among its drivers is vital. Therefore, this research paper is primarily an attempt to offer a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between low-carbon growth and urban sustainability integrating global climate change impact. Moreover, it will look closely into the carbon footprint of Hong Kong and thereby suggesting options to reduce carbon emission to proceed toward a low carbon city as well as promoting sustainable development through systematic review of literatures.