Bangladesh Country Investment Plan for Environment, Forestry and Climate Change (EFCC CIP) 2016-2021.

This Bangladesh Country Investment Plan for Environment, Forestry and Climate Change (EFCC CIP) 2016-2021 is a whole-of-government initiative led by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF). It reflects the priorities of the Government of Bangladesh and a wide range of stakeholders active in the EFCC sectors. The overall goal of the EFCC CIP is to increase the contribution of the EFCC sectors to national sustainable development through the enhanced provision of ecosystem services, thereby helping to reduce poverty, improve environmental and human health benefits, and increase resilience to climate change. Four investment pillars were identified for achieving the goal of the EFCC CIP: 1 Sustainable development and management of natural resources; 2 Environmental pollution reduction and control; 3 Adaptation and resilience to, and mitigation of, climate change; 4 Environmental governance, gender, and human and institutional capacity development.
The EFCC CIP promotes food security through programmes such as soil and groundwater management. Agriculture is the most important sector in Bangladesh economy and plays a vital role in food security, employment and livelihoods. Thus, the management of soils and groundwater resources is of key importance. The main objective of soil and groundwater management programme is to ensure that land and water resources are managed effectively to enhance their capacity to sustain agricultural production, improve groundwater conservation, conserve biodiversity, regulate water and nutrient cycles, sequester carbon, and provide livelihoods. It contains three sub-programmes: 1 Improve soil fertility and groundwater management, with particular focus on north and northwest Bangladesh; 2 Manage soil erosion in hilly areas; 3 Manage coastal land and prevent and cope with waterlogging and salinity.
The EFCC CIP seeks to make agriculture, forestry and fisheries more productive and sustainable. Priority areas of intervention proposed in the EFCC CIP include: Sustainable forest management, and enhanced socioeconomic benefits from forests; Biodiversity conservation; Sustainable management of wetlands, rivers and marine ecosystems; Reduced pollution from agriculture and other sources through minimizing pollution from fertilizers and pesticides; etc. Priority investment areas include: Social forestry, reforestation, afforestation, coastal greenbelt development, landscape restoration, and agroforestry; Improve forest monitoring geographic information systems and remote sensing-based forest management; Improve security of land tenure, stakeholder awareness and capacity; etc.
Considering that the poor and vulnerable groups bear the costs of environmental and natural resource degradation disproportionately, equity, including gender equity, is an important part of the EFCC CIP. Women are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because their access to and control over resources and decision-making are more constrained than they are for men. Gender is a specific programme in the EFCC CIP and is also mainstreamed in other programmes; the Gender Action Plan sets out the CIP’s approach to this design principle. Priority investment areas include: Forest co-management and participatory afforestation and enrichment planting (social forestry, including plantations on marginal land and degraded forests) and livelihood support (including homestead forestry and agroforestry) for forest-dependent communities; Support for financial services and credit programmes for forest-based and conservation-based enterprise development, with special attention to vulnerable groups, including women; etc.
The EFCC CIP supports to enable more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems through the investment in: Develop small and medium-sized forest enterprises and value chains for socioeconomic benefits, food security and employment creation; Improved social forestry guidelines that highlight genetic improvement in seedling production, land and species suitability, and maintenance operations; etc.
In order to improve the adaptation and resilience to, and mitigation of, climate change, priority investment areas are identified , including: 1. Disaster risk reduction, in particular, strengthening early-warning systems; 2. Sustainable infrastructure development; 3. Mitigation and low-carbon development; 4. Increased resilience at the community level. The programme of increased resilience at the community level will focus on the following: 1. Supporting and maintaining action research to continuously improve the adaptation of communities (including various stakeholders within communities, such as women and men, the young and old, and exploring alternative livelihood options) to natural disasters; 2. Supporting and building the capacity of communities and extension officers to manage ecosystems so as to prevent degradation and enhance carbon sequestration; 3. Supporting the integration of ecosystem-based management practices into national and regional strategies and action plans, such as the disaster management plan ; 4. Developing a gender-sensitive mechanism or plan for the participation of communities in forest development 5. Supporting and building community resilience to climate-attributable diseases; etc.