Collective Pathways for a Sustainable Bangladesh: Highlights from the Climate Roundtable
LightCastle Analytics Wing
January 8, 2025
On November 27, 2024, the Climate Roundtable: Collective Pathways for a Sustainable Bangladesh, hosted by LightCastle Partners in partnership with Unilever Bangladesh, convened leaders from diverse industries, development organizations, and financial institutions at the Sheraton Dhaka. The event provided a platform to address Bangladesh’s unique climate vulnerabilities, share innovative practices, and foster collaborative solutions for a sustainable future.
Organised against the backdrop of Bangladesh’s geographic vulnerabilities and its reliance on climate-sensitive sectors, the roundtable aimed to:
Identify and address ecosystem gaps in policy, technology, and financing.
Enable multi-stakeholder convergence to drive collective climate action.
Propose actionable pathways to align with global sustainability benchmarks, including the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and net-zero objectives.
Key Discussions and Sector Highlights
Collaboration for Impact: Strengthening partnerships to address climate challenges emerged as a central focus. Public-private cooperation was seen as crucial in driving systemic change, aligning corporate strategies with national goals. Participants discussed integrating sustainability across industries and establishing knowledge-sharing platforms for scaling impactful solutions.
Highlighting Ecosystem Gaps: Stakeholders identified barriers such as financing challenges, lack of technical expertise, and limited cross-industry synergies. The discussions emphasized the need for capacity building, technological innovation, and supportive regulatory frameworks to enhance climate resilience.
Net Zero Goals and Implications: Participants examined how industries could align operations with net-zero targets, addressing challenges such as adopting clean technologies, managing carbon emissions, and reducing resource dependency in supply chains.
Showcasing Current Initiatives and Pathways for Action: The roundtable showcased innovative strategies and sustainability practices already underway, emphasizing the need to scale successes and replicate them across sectors.
Sector-Specific Highlights
Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG): Leaders in the FMCG sector demonstrated impressive efforts toward sustainability:
PepsiCo highlighted circular packaging and electric vehicle fleets to reduce carbon emissions.
Unilever and Pran RFL showcased their Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) initiatives for plastics and energy-efficient operations, while Pran RFL also shared its success in municipal collaborations to enhance waste management.
Akij Group advocated for renewable energy investments and stronger regulatory frameworks to scale sustainable practices.
Gemcon Group showcased creative uses of biogas in tea drying and the production of eco-friendly jute bags at Kazi & Kazi Tea.
Ready-Made Garments (RMG): The RMG sector stood out with circular economy practices:
DBL Group shared its innovative recycling of pre-consumer garment waste and PET bottles into yarn, reducing water use and emissions. They called for collective industry action to establish shared recycling facilities and logistics systems, setting new benchmarks in sustainability for Bangladesh’s largest export sector.
Energy Innovation: Energy leaders focused on renewable solutions and reducing carbon footprints:
SOLshare discussed the transformative potential of solar-plus-storage systems for underserved regions.
Rahimafrooz advocated for regional energy zoning and solar-powered cold storage to strengthen supply chains.
Chevron highlighted its efforts to mitigate environmental impacts, including water treatment and reducing diesel dependency in power systems.
Agriculture: Agriculture innovations emphasized resilience and sustainability:
ACI showcased pathogen-free shrimp farming and stress-tolerant crops for saline-prone regions, ensuring food security amid climate change.
The Sustainable Agriculture Foundation (SAF) highlighted its Farmer Hub Model, integrating mechanization, sustainable water management, and low-carbon techniques like weather-based crop insurance.
Palladium Group stressed the importance of inclusive financing to empower smallholder farmers to adopt climate-smart practices and ensure market access.
Pharmaceuticals: Reckitt presented sustainability initiatives, including tracking plastic use per product and implementing water-neutral factory operations, exemplifying the potential for operational excellence with minimal environmental impact.
Financial Institutions: Financial institutions underscored their pivotal role in scaling climate action:
Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) advocated for green bonds, blended finance, and participatory risk-sharing models to de-risk investments in clean technologies.
HSBC highlighted preferential financing for businesses transitioning to greener operations, emphasizing the need for alignment with global benchmarks.
The World Bank reinforced the importance of systemic reforms and climate resilience metrics in investment frameworks, stressing the need for collaborative research and shared infrastructure.
Next Steps
The Climate Roundtable outlined several actionable steps to accelerate progress toward Bangladesh’s sustainability and climate resilience goals. Building on the insights and commitments shared during the discussions, the following key steps will be prioritized to translate ideas into impactful initiatives:
Facilitating Collaboration Discussions Convene follow-up sessions with key stakeholders to explore potential collaborations and synergies highlighted during the roundtable. These discussions will focus on aligning efforts across industries to drive systemic change, particularly in areas such as waste management, energy innovation, and sustainable agriculture.
Formalising Quick-Win Partnerships Identify and formalise partnerships that offer immediate opportunities for impact. For instance, the proposed collaboration between DBL Group and Pran RFL on waste recycling can serve as a model for quick wins, addressing pressing challenges while showcasing the benefits of industry linkages.
Developing Sector-Specific Action Plans Work with industry leaders to draft tailored action plans addressing sector-specific challenges and opportunities. These plans will outline steps to integrate climate-smart technologies, adopt circular practices, and enhance financing mechanisms, providing a roadmap for scalable and sustainable solutions.
By implementing these next steps, the roundtable’s outcomes will be transformed into actionable initiatives that advance Bangladesh’s climate goals, foster cross-sector collaboration, and promote long-term resilience and sustainability.
At LightCastle, we take a systemic and data-driven approach to create opportunities for growth and impact. We are an international management consulting firm which creates systemic and data-driven opportunities for growth and impact in emerging markets. By collaborating with development partners and leveraging the power of the private sector, we strive to boost economies, inspire businesses, and change lives at scale.
