The ‘Third Annual National Conference on Urban Resilience to Climate Change’ held!
The conference, titled ‘Third Annual National Conference on Urban Resilience to Climate Change’, brought together experts, practitioners and policy makers from all corners of the country to discuss on making cities climate resilient and migrant friendly.
On the last day of the conference, today, WaterAid hosted a parallel session on “The Role of Progressive Tariffs in Sustainable Urban Water Services”, where discussions were held surrounding the challenges of implementing progressive tariff models in the country where inequality still prevails in every sector, including water, and where the burden of this tariff mostly is borne by the underprivileged and marginalised of the society.
The two-hour session was chaired by Md Abdullah, Project Engineer and Managing Director of Khulna WASA, with key participation by Md Khairul Islam, Country Director of WaterAid, and a paper presentation on the importance of progressive tariffs and how they have become an important tool in achieving economic efficiency, environmental sustainability, and social equity by Imrul Kayes Muniruzzaman, Director of Fundraising and Learning at WaterAid.
Vibrant discussions were held during the question-answer session where important takeaways were received, which included:
• designing the progressive tariff in a way which will be both financially viable and socially acceptable
• meeting the growing demand for good quality water supply despite the huge investments needed to design the progressive tariff
process
• prioritising collaboration and ownership amongst the sector along with government initiative to ensure a sustainable progressive
tariff model
• increasing capacity building and encouraging community participation to collectively combine efforts to influence and advocate
for quality water supply for communities
The session ended with concluding remarks from Md Khairul Islam, who in his speech requested everyone’s participation in developing pro-poor progressive tariff strategies that can help in reducing the social inequality that vastly exists, further building on new partnerships to exchange ideas and best practices for a global cause altogether.
This conference was a platform for academicians, development practitioners and the government to all come together in strategically rethinking urban and climate change activities - addressing steps to overcome emerging challenges and promote efficiency, sustainability, affordability, and equity.
