 Good afternoon and Asalaamu Alaikum. It's my great pleasure to share with you what we've been doing for the last four days So in fact seven days, we had a three-day field visit followed by Four-day conference. We just finished I'll give you a glimpse of what we did and then I'll share with you the outcomes of what we came out with so let me start by Showing you who we are and can see from the photograph We were 230 participants from 40 countries many of whom are still with us and in the photograph You'll see people are holding up both hands. It's the 10th anniversary. So we put up 10 fingers to commemorate the 10th anniversary of CBA 10th conference that we've organized and We had a lot of people there and a lot of interactions as you can see a lot of discussions over tea coffee and in the breaks We had an inaugural session in this auditorium where we had a Video-recorded speech similar to the one Christina Figueres gave us from Mary Robinson who has also been a previous keynote speaker in a previous conference and she sent us her best wishes as well and Then we had a three days of field visits and these are just a few glimpses. There are hundreds of photographs of the field visits People went to visit different places on different days in and around the theme for this year's conference was on enhancing urban resilience of urban communities and hence most of the field visits were in and around Haka and Nearly a hundred people went on the field visits and not quite a hundred and they as I said had a good time and took lots of photographs And then during the conference itself we had a poster session you can see Our colleague from Iqat Ishtiak who won the best poster prize We're very proud of him and we also had games the upper right Photograph is a photograph of people running around playing games which We always have at our conferences run by our colleagues from the Red Cross Center Pablo and and Bettina They're great game Makers and players and we all enjoyed that we in fact we just had one a little while ago to close the conference with So we do a lot of what we call out of the box sessions They're not just PowerPoint presentation after PowerPoint presentation and as they say death by PowerPoint We try and avoid that and we have a lot of interaction We have sessions which we call out of the box sessions Which are innovative ways of engaging people on different topics and one of them was in fact on Learning from failures very often we try to a not admit that we failed and be Not acknowledge or learn anything from failing and very often Failures can teach us a lot more than success can because you know what to avoid and what not to do So we had a session on that and that was a very interesting session where people were encouraged to share their thoughts from their failures Experiences of failure and learning from that and then we also had after hours fun There was a very very interesting very innovative in my view presentation by a group of university students from Takah University Theater Department and Drama Department Who did a pop song a pop song is a Bangladeshi folk song Mostly sang in the southern part of the country and it was done with the researcher from the University of Manchester Dr. Joanne Jordan, I don't know if Joanne still with us Who is doing research on the use of pop songs for? Giving information to people on complex issues like climate change So it was a scripted designed pop song performance by these Takah University students in which they presented very very professionally Both with drama and with song the issues of migration and land tenure and then very cleverly Involved the audience in the discussion so it transitioned from a performance Into a discussion in this very theater on the evening of the first day And I thought it was a very very innovative and certainly very professionally done Exercise by the students and you can see some of the people there on the stage So that's a glimpse of what we've been doing for the last few days for those of you who are not with us For those of you who are with us you will Recognize what we've been doing I'm now going to share with you the outcomes of the Conference that we've had so far and I'm going to do two things firstly Frame the issue that we've been discussing Which as you can see the theme is enhancing resilience of urban communities and then I Mention a few of what we are calling statements, which are not just recommendations to somebody to do something but recommendations for somebody to do something and Promising an offering to do something about that with them ourselves So one of the traditions of the CBA conferences is We we like to make final statements of commitment their pledges of things that we pledge to do and not just Asking other people to do things although we do ask other people to do things But we also pledge to work with them to make them happen. So let me start with the first one and That's the issue of urbanization and as you know the the world now is about 50 percent already in cities and urban areas and It's going to get bigger that proportion is going to rise about 50 percent very very quickly and Of them about a billion people live in informal settlements But sometimes we use used to call slums, but now we call informal settlements and A majority of it the fastest growing smaller towns are in Asia and Africa and so that frames what we are talking about here But at the same time cities are very strongly linked to both the rural population Places like Dhaka and others we have a continuum of people coming in from the rural areas connected to the rural areas and to the larger ecosystems within which the urban Conurbation sit so Cities are not just confined to themselves They sit within a larger ecosystem that needs to be taken into account and the final point is An emphasis on local governance very often particularly in the smaller cities and towns There is a lack of local governance capacity government capacity which Constrains the ability of the municipal authorities to develop a user friendly community friendly City for the citizens of that city Moving on to the issue of climate change in the context of cities or urbanization or urban areas Very often the most vulnerable People living who are vulnerable to climate change also happen to be the poorest people in a city Living in the most vulnerable areas of that city and this is true as much for cities like Dhaka Or cities like say New Orleans in the United States where when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans More than a thousand people lost their lives All those thousand people were poor people living in the ninth ward of the city Which is one of the poorest and most vulnerable parts of the city none of the rich people in New Orleans died From Katrina. So even in rich countries The people who are most vulnerable tend to be poor and in the city context they tend to be living in the most vulnerable areas a Lot of cities are on coastal zones And coastal zones in particular Low-lying coasts are now one of the most threatened by long-term Climate change impacts like sea level rise and we are certainly seeing that in Bangladesh now particularly the southeast coast of Bangladesh a Southwest coast sorry of Bangladesh around Kulna in that area and Kulna city for example It's definitely seeing the impacts of salinity intrusion The other thing that we can say about cities is that informal settle settlements in cities are very often the most vulnerable Even rich people and middle-class people can also be vulnerable and they also have a role to play But generally speaking the poorest people living in the informal settlements tend to be amongst those that are most vulnerable and hence Deserve for special focus going forward and at the same time in the climate change context cities Happen to be the places that have very high carbon footprints. They they account for a large amount of the emissions global emissions and therefore also have a role in Releasing those emissions through mitigation and The last point is the most important point from the point of view of this conference And we had a lot of evidence presented here from many many different countries That much is already happening many communities are already active They're trying to build resilient cities. This is not a blank canvas. We're not starting from zero There is a lot of work being done that we can build on we can share and learn from each other And that's the purpose of this conference and we can build on going forward and the third Element again building on that last one from the the previous slide is about those urban communities And there as I said, they're thriving. They're taking place the cities Are all have mixed communities which include both formal and informal settlements rich and poor middle-class Inhabitants all have to come together to do things for the city Often they do sometimes they don't But making that happen is the key and there are many different groups which include women children elderly disabled amongst others ethnic minorities sometimes and so on so we need to take account of these differences But at the same time see how they can all be involved in both planning for the city going forward and managing the city in real time And one of the most important things is that many of the communities are already becoming self-organized We heard examples and we have actually representative from a number of those communities in Philippines and in other countries here that 300 cities in Asia and well over 600 communities around the world Have active community led activities and they include savings groups of people are Funding themselves that they're saving money. They're managing it in collaboration with local government These are not micro credit schemes or NGO schemes These are community led schemes that are actually putting money together and using it for themselves for their own infrastructure and betterment and That these informal settlement communities now are linked both within countries And there are a number of them in Bangladesh that are already there They form federations at the national level and they have federations at the both regional level in the Asia case for the Asian housing Groups and globally with the slum and shack dwellers international for example So they are getting their act together They are moving to scale and we had a number of examples here and people from these organizations with us over the last few days And we heard some very good examples of their work And so that's what we are going to be focusing on as we make our recommendations or go forward So there's three sets of recommendations or statements. We're calling them I aimed at different audiences and as I said in each case they are advocacy messages for an audience but Supported by offers to engage to make them happen. The first one is with respect to climate finance and What we are saying is that those who are producing and providing climate finance For adaptation in particular need to find ways of Providing support to these informal settlements in the cities It is not easy to do and by and large most of them have failed to do it They recognize it's an important thing to do but they haven't found good ways of actually delivering it and our Proposition is that the best way to do so is to find intermediaries Who can actually manage to take money in millions tens of millions? But provide them to the communities in small grounds that communities don't need millions They need maybe ten thousand or twenty thousand dollars or euros or whatever the currency is And so you need an intermediary who can take large amounts of money manage it Provided to the communities in smaller amounts and then monitor the effective use of that and there are such organizations now I just mentioned two of them the Asian housing rights group and the slum and Shackwell is International and so the final point is with regard to aimed at the Green Climate Fund and One of the reasons why we have done that is that we happen to have one of the board members of the Green Climate Fund Sitting at the table here on the far left of the table from our side Dr. Kamaland in a month from Bangladesh who represents the least developed countries grew as a board member of the Green Climate Fund and Who has been fighting for this cause for some time? I can tell you from personal experience and so the recommendation which we would like to pass on to the GCF board Through him is that the GCF board should find ways for fast track enhanced direct access for these kinds of intermediary agencies that can deliver to smaller communities on the ground at the moment the Larger amounts of money tend to go to large infrastructure development projects because those are easy to Absorb large amounts of money and spend large amounts of money and they tend not to go to intermediaries who can deliver it in small amounts to Communities and what we are arguing for is that that needs to be done if we want to help the most vulnerable the second set of Recommendations or statement that we're making is to another group who are actually orders of magnitude more important or larger in terms of their funds Which is the infrastructure in the cities and this is particularly relevant for Asia where There are going to be over the next decade trillions of dollars of investments made in Invest in infrastructure in cities like Dhaka We are seeing that happen right now other cities in Bangladesh and across the continent From a variety of sources the International Development Bank the Asian Development Bank the World Bank the new infrastructure bank that's been created From private sector investments from a variety of sources from National Government Exchequer's huge amounts of money are going to flow into infrastructure Our argument is that in order for that investment to result in resilient cities They need to incorporate the views and the inputs from local communities in the planning phase of those infrastructure development without doing that they are likely to either Displace citizens of their own city or not benefit the citizens of their city So if the the ultimate beneficiaries are to be citizens of the city then we need to involve Those very citizens particularly the more vulnerable in the planning process and take their views into account as much as possible and then finally the final point is again related to what I just said which is that We have not made this investment yet the trillions of dollars. I'm talking about Are still to be spent and so we can start planning that that it gets spent well now If we spend it not properly then retrofitting or fixing things afterwards is a lot more expensive So this actually represents a window of opportunity of making the right kinds of decisions on investments And for those who are going to make those decisions on investments Our appeal is please do ensure that you consult with citizens with the poor citizens in particular And again, we have a variety and a plethora of organizations here from many many cities around the world Who can engage and provide that engagement process consultation process and are quite willing to do so the third and I think the final set of recommendations and issues are to do with governments national governments generally and the recommendation is to focus on local governments and to build the Resilient cities often being the constraint often being lack of capacity in local government particularly in the smaller towns and The upcoming Towns as it were so across the next decades one of the things that we will see is that what is now Considered to be a rural part of a country is Going to end up being an urban part of that country that same geography that same place But we're not thinking about how it's going to look We're just letting it happen really nearly and then before we know it There's a town where there wasn't only villages before So we need to think about these towns of the future as it were and start putting in some kind of infrastructure That is both useful for the inhabitants particularly from a climate change perspective They're useful for the most vulnerable inhabitants of those places But do it in a planned manner that then delivers a city or a town that is actually conducive to live in for its inhabitants And the final point being the most vulnerable communities always suffer the most both From poverty and from lack of good governance as well as from climate change impact So the poorest and most vulnerable are always going to be the victims of whatever new risk that emerges whether the risk comes from Lack of good governance or it comes from this new emerging issue of climate change So I think that's more or less all in terms of sharing the outcomes of our Outputs of the conference we will be having a formal Proceedings published fairly soon. I hope within a few weeks which will be sent out to all the participants electronically It'll be on our website The press release has already gone to the media if the media are interested they can pick that up Some of us are around for interviews if any of the media want to do interviews as well And this has been on social media on Facebook and tweet Twitter. We've got a Even though we've only had about or we've had roughly two and a half two hundred and fifty Participants here over the course of the last four days We've had around that number of people around the world who have been following us on Twitter and Facebook and online a lot of the Speeches that were made and presentations that were made have been regularly put up online and people have been watching that We know that from feedback that we're receiving from people. So before I finish I have just one Very nice duty to perform and that is to announce where the next CBA conference is going to be CBA 11 It's going to be in Uganda in Kampala hosted by Macarreira University. We're very pleased that they were here and The government of Uganda has given us an indication that they would be willing for us to be hold it there So most likely the dates will be the second week of June and let me invite all of you who are interested to Come to that the theme for it is likely to be although we haven't decided that a hundred percent yet Focus on ecosystems and natural resources. It's a lot of Community-based adaptation going on there in those systems, but it doesn't mean we'll forget urban We will also do urban in Kampala as well. So with that, let me thank you all Particularly those of you who were in the conference for being with us I hope I wish you all Bon voyage back to your countries safe journeys and do stay in touch with us And for those of you who are just here for this closing session I hope I've given you an impression of what we did over the last few days. Thank you all very much