US, Germany join in climate change mitigation at Chunati Wildlife Sanctuary

Dhaka, Aug 12 (bdnews24.com) - USAID and German development agency GTZ, have joined to support global climate change mitigation and adaptation with a project based at the Chunati Wildlife Sanctuary in Bangladesh.

The collaboration between the two organisations will be funded by €2.5 million from the GTZ's Participatory Forest Management and Reforestation Project in Chunati Wildlife Sanctuary and $15.5 million from the USAID four-year Integrated Protected Area Co-Management (IPAC) Project,, a US embassy statement said on Wednesday.

The IPAC Project works in 26 major wetlands and forest protected areas and numerous smaller ecologically important freshwater wetlands throughout Bangladesh. Chunati is one of three sanctuaries included in IPAC. It is designed to improve natural resource management through collaboration with local communities and the government.

Chunati is an ecological hotspot that serves as a major corridor for movement of Asian elephants between Burma and Bangladesh and is a habitat for garjan – an important timber species under threat.

USAID and the GTZ will plant trees to help restore 2,000 hectares of forest land, and will collaborate on ways to decrease carbon emissions in the region, said the statement.

It claimed that these initiatives would help restore the severely degraded sanctuary, raise awareness through public education, and create alternative income opportunities for over 125,000 people who live in communities in and around Chunati.

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