The Danish Minister for Development Cooperation and Global Climate Policy, Dan Jørgensen, today signed an agreement in Bagerhat to extend the Local Government Initiative on Climate Change (LoGIC) Project for two years from June 2023 to June 2025 in the presence of the Danish Ambassador to Bangladesh Winnie Estrup Petersen, and UNDP Resident Representative Stefan Liller.

Following the extension, with 40m Danish Kroner (US$ 5.6m) from the Denmark government, the extension of the LoGIC project will be implemented in two districts of Chattogram Hill Tracts – namely Rangamati and Bandarban – to strengthen communities’ resilience to the impacts of climate change by implementing locally-led adaptation strategies.

The dignitaries from Denmark, along with representatives of UNDP and UNCDF, visited Mongla in Bagerhat to observe and understand the impacts of climate change and how both agencies are building climate resilience by providing innovative solutions for locally-led adaptation.

The new phase of the LoGIC project aims to consolidate the achievements of the last phase, while simultaneously expanding to two new districts – Bandarban and Rangamati, CHT – with the ultimate aim of securing national and international resources for an expansion of the project model across all climate-vulnerable districts in Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Development Cooperation and Global Climate Policy, during his visit to climate-affected areas in Mongla, took note of the adaptive measures taken by the affected communities to strengthen their resilience against climate change.

“Bangladesh is at the forefront of the climate crisis, and international partners together with the Bangladesh government are working relentlessly to ensure affected communities are better prepared to face the impacts of climate change. To this end, we found that Bandarban and Rangamati have been identified as some of the most climate-vulnerable districts in Bangladesh according to LoGIC’s Climate Vulnerability Index. This is why the Danish International Development Agency is focusing on the expansion of the LoGIC model in the two districts. We hope that through this, we can strengthen the capacity of vulnerable people and local stakeholders in the face of the climate crisis,” Mr Jørgensen said.

“Bangladesh is often cited as one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, and it is the poor who are disproportionately affected. As such, we must focus on increasing communities' resilience to the impacts of climate change. To this end, UNDP continues to work on mainstreaming climate change into local level planning and financing processes by blending scientific knowledge with local expertise to identify climate risks and support effective adaptation measures,” said Stefan Liller, Resident Representative of UNDP Bangladesh.

In 2016, the Government of Bangladesh, the European Union, and the Government of Sweden, together with UNDP and UNCDF, jointly designed the ‘Local Government Initiative on Climate Change’ (LoGIC) project to develop a mechanism to deliver climate finance to the most vulnerable households and local government institutions to build resilience and promote local action on climate change adaptation at scale.

LoGIC applies the Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility's approach of Performance Based Climate Resilience Grants that channel resources to local governments for locally identified adaptation projects, accompanied by technical support and capacity building.