 Our Honorable Chief Guest, Abdullah al-Islam Jacob, MP Deputy Minister, Ministry of Environment and Forests, our special guests, our guests from abroad, and most importantly distinguished participants. Good morning and welcome to IUB. As the Vice Chancellor of IUB and as the host of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, I'm particularly pleased and privileged to be here at the opening ceremony of the 10th Community-Based Adaptation Conference. This year's theme, which is enhancing urban community resilience, has a particular resonance for me professionally. Professionally, I'm both a demographer and a psychiatrist, so I'm particularly interested in the issue of rural urban migration, urban adaptation, and the issue of resilience is, of course, something which is very much a part of what psychiatrists deal with. And I'm intrigued by the notion of community resilience, and I'm sure that there are huge parallels between human resilience and community resilience. The issues which underpin this conference have been articulated on by both Mary Robinson and my previous speaker, Dr. Ati Kraman, but I think some of it bears repeating, and I'm going to just touch on a few points. We are now in Dhaka, which is one of the largest mega cities of the world. Currently, depending on which list you look at, we are either in the sixth or fifth position in terms of population, which is now about 20 million. And the current growth rate projections, which are roughly in the order of 3 to 4 percent a year, suggest that we are going to double in about 15 years. So we are really in the eye of the storm here. When we're talking about urban community resilience, there can be no more fitting setting than where we are right now. I think it will come as no surprise to this audience that, of course, Bangladesh is really one of the most vulnerable countries to the adverse impacts of climate change, and one of the big issues with regard to climate change is rural to urban migration as a form of adaptation. And I want to stress this. I think for too long we have seen that as an adverse consequence. We have lamented the fact that with rising sea levels, with the flooding of coastal areas, that one of the so-called adverse or bad things that is going to happen is that huge populations are going to have to be forced to move from where they are to possibly to other places, and most importantly to cities. And this is seen in many contexts as something that needs to be avoided, as something that needs to be at the very least lamented, and it's seen as a warning. I want to sort of slightly change our perspective on this. I think, as was pointed out, obviously, mitigation is important, but it has a very long time frame. And certainly in the context of Bangladesh where our carbon footprint is so small, it's not at all clear that mitigation has much of a role at all. I mean, it's certainly true that here we are going to be paying the price of climate change, even though our contribution to it is minuscule, but we, like all other countries, will have to adapt to it. And one of the most effective, and please, I want to stress this issue, one of the most effective types of adaptation is rural-urban migration. Now, this, by the way, is not a new phenomenon. Rural-urban migration has been going on for many, many decades in the developing world. I think in 2012, for the first time, the majority of the world population was urban. Now, as a demographer, I'm keenly aware of the fact that migration evokes lots of different kinds of emotions. And at the very least, we talk about that migration needs to be managed. And I think that is something that all of us can agree on. There's a lot of economic analysis which suggests that urban migration is not only inevitable, it is, in fact, very, very positive with regard to increases in economic growth. And the urban centers of the world are really the drivers of the world economy. And this is no different in Bangladesh. According to some estimates, 50% of the GDP of Bangladesh is generated within 25 miles of Dhaka city. And this is going to remain the game. Now, I think all of us will agree that this is a phenomena that A cannot be stopped. 28% of Bangladesh is now urban. Estimates suggest that 50% of Bangladesh will be urban by 2050. And it will continue as is. By the way, we are no different than other developing countries. Most of the development is in the order of 60% to 80% urban. So the question is, what do we do? This is a phenomena that is happening. We need to manage it. And the core piece of managing this is enhancing urban community resilience. Now, when you think about urban communities and the huge pressure that is going to come upon them by this mass of people, who by the way are already moving and what climate change will do is really accelerate this process. So there are several things that we need to consider. One is that we need to make sure that this process is more widespread than it is currently. In Bangladesh, much of the migration, even though we call it rural urban, it's actually migration to Dhaka, the capital city. Largely, it's because as people once asked us, will he start on a famous bank robber? Why he robbed banks? And he said, that's where the money is. Similarly, people come to Dhaka. They come to the capital city. And you ask them, why? And they'll tell you, that's where the money is. Now, if you want to manage this process, if you want to spread it around, which is what we have to do if you want to reduce the pressure on just one city, we're going to have to make sure we develop other cities as attractive destinations. Now, what makes a city an attractive destination other than the presence of employment or access to employment? We need to invest very bluntly in various kinds of infrastructure, infrastructure that has to do with water and sanitation, infrastructure which has to do with energy, infrastructure which has to do with dealing with health effects. Now, climate change has two dimensions. One is sort of the short term. You have a huge storm or a cyclone or a tornado. And the other is the insidious longer term, and perhaps not that much longer, the effects of increases in global warming, which lead to increases in salinity, increases in sea level, increases in drought, increases in heat, sort of extreme weather events. Now, all of this requires the collaboration and cooperation of many stakeholders, just as this conference has come about because many groups came together, both public and private, both academia and NGOs and community organization and the community itself. You know, it's a similar sort of group of people who are going to have to be involved if you're going to make urban community resilience more than just a tagline. If you're going to make it a reality, a lot of stakeholders need to be involved. Perhaps the most important, as is indicated in the name, is the community. Now, it's not so clear to most people what does it mean to say the community? Who is the community? I would argue that we are the community. All of us are the community. But there's a clear sense that the community needs to be engaged both through the political process, and I think that is key. That means we need the importance of local government, regional governments, national governments, and of course the international sort of governments as well. We need non-government actors as well, non-NGOs, which of course, you know, Bangladesh, is an icon, a pioneer in public-private partnerships. And I think it is indeed fitting that we're talking about urban community resilience in a setting where public-private partnership, the partnership between NGOs and the government have been so well-established. And we have provided so many role models to the rest of the world in terms of microcredit, in terms of the provision of health and education services and other kinds of services. In fact, I was reading somewhere that we are the only country in the world where the scale of services provided by non-government actors is so large and so seamlessly integrated with government services. That is a strength. We in Bangladesh are already very much involved with the community at every level. And I think that is something that we need to leverage, and we need to provide models that other countries and the rest of the world can adopt. Let me talk a little bit about one other aspect. As a university president, of course, my business is educating and training the next generation of people. We hope that we will train the next generation of leaders. These young people are going to be the people who are going to take forth not only Bangladesh but the rest of the world into newer, more nuanced understanding of the complex challenges posed by climate change and by issues like rural-urban migration. They are people who will have, we hope to equip with the right kind of skills and the right kind of holistic sort of perspective. So one of the issues that is perhaps not as much focused on when we talk about community resilience, a lot of work has been put on governance and trying to make sure that there is an adequate sort of communication between stakeholders at the community level and local and national governments. We've talked about in financial investments in infrastructure without which none of this is going to work. But what we haven't talked about, at least more explicitly, is this issue of increasing what I call human capital. I think Dr. Srinivasan has been a very interesting article suggested when he said that we need to shift our perspective on looking at rural-urban migration as a laudable adaptation rather than an adverse consequence. For that to happen, we need to invest. We need to provide better income earning opportunities. We need to have a much more educated workforce. This huge mass of people are going to come into the city and end up in various slums around the center of the city. We need to upgrade their skills. We need to give them a path to become more productive citizens and not only of the country, but of the world. So I think investments in human capital are key, and I hope that this conference will at least spend some time talking about enhancing the knowledge base, enhancing and providing more access to education in every shape and form. I think that really is a somewhat neglected aspect of the conversations about climate change and community adaptation. I mean, that is happening at some level. If you think about community-based adaptation, we're talking about learning from the community. We're talking about giving importance to local knowledge, which at many levels is as important as expert knowledge or knowledge, if you're much more. Knowledge should not be just the exclusive provenance of people who are experts. Even the community members are also experts in their own way. They may not have formalized knowledge, but they certainly have a much better ear to the ground. And I think if we are going to move forward, we are going to need to integrate both the formal and informal systems of training and knowledge gathering and dissemination. Last but not least, I want to talk about resilience. The notion of resilience, which comes out from the field that I'm in, which is psychology and psychiatry, is about the ability to adapt and particularly the ability to adapt to adverse consequences and adverse situations. We cannot control the world, but as I tell my clients, you can control how you respond to it. And that is the key. The key to success and happiness is not hoping that the world will be a better place, which is, of course, a nice thing to hope for. The key is how you are as an individual, as a group, as a community going to adapt to whatever comes at you. And there, again, I think we are in the right place. Bangladesh is both a poster child for disasters, but particularly a poster child for resilience and appropriate adaptation. Our record of withstanding and surviving natural disasters with minimal loss of life is exemplary. I think we have developed a huge amount of local experience and national experience with regard to disaster management. And I think we need to put that into good use. And we need that experience of engaging the community. And, of course, this notion that we will survive and we will thrive. And that is where I really want to sort of wrap up with. I think at the end of the day, the most hopeful message is not to have this notion of doom and gloom that disaster is about to strike. The message that I'd like to leave all of us with is we will survive and we will thrive. Thank you.