Satkhira: Urban Green Living Labs for Vulnerable Communities

The Urban Living Labs for the Urban Poor in Satkhira is a climate-resilience initiative that pilots community-designed green infrastructure, home gardening, and public-space improvements in one of Bangladesh’s most climate-vulnerable municipalities. With €105,000 in combined funding, the project mobilised 150 low-income households to implement small-scale, climate-responsive horticulture; established a solar-powered digital learning hub for climate awareness; and upgraded shared urban spaces to reduce heat stress, strengthen food security, and empower women and youth. Through participatory methods, training, and municipal collaboration, the initiative demonstrates how low-cost, socially embedded interventions can help informal settlements adapt to heat, cyclones, salinity, and environmental degradation while enhancing social cohesion and local governance capacity.

The project implementation combined participatory planning, capacity-building, infrastructure improvements and pilot testing:

• Initial research & participatory assessment: Through focus-group discussions and key-informant interviews, the project engaged residents, civil society and municipal staff to map vulnerabilities, resources, and potential interventions. This allowed selection of neighbourhoods and pilot households. 
• Selection of 150 households across informal settlements to engage in home-based horticulture (front yard, roof, backyard), based on training from the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) on climate-resilient horticulture. 
• Training & capacity-building: Workshops and training sessions for residents (especially women) on urban gardening, climate-adaptation, environmental awareness. Also establishment of a local “digital learning hub,” solar-powered, to support climate education, access to municipal service info, and early warning systems. 
• Greening & public-space upgrades: Creation or improvement of green spaces, planting trees, developing communal open areas, enabling common-space access. In effect, shifting parts of the city from informal settlements to more inclusive, green-equipped neighbourhoods. 
• Participatory governance and maintenance planning: Engaging community members in maintenance and management of green spaces; building ownership and long-term sustainability of interventions. 

This combination of social, environmental and educational interventions formed a holistic urban-climate adaptation model adapted to the local socio-economic context.

The project leveraged a multi-stakeholder partnership model to ensure relevance, legitimacy, and integrated implementation:

• Local NGO Anando - implementing partner, community mobilization, training, outreach. 
• Municipal authorities of Satkhira Pourashava - facilitating access to public spaces, municipal coordination, recognising need for environmental management services. 
• International development agency GIZ, via programme Liveable and Inclusive Cities for All (LICA) / Cities CHALLENGE 2.0 - funding, technical guidance, oversight. 
• Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) - providing horticultural guidance and training for home gardening interventions. 

These partnerships allowed combining local social capital, municipal governance, technical expertise and external funding - essential for inclusive, sustainable urban environmental management.

To ensure community ownership, informality-sensitive rollout and sustainability, the project adopted a proactive communication and awareness-raising approach:

• Use of local multipliers (residents, small-business owners, youth, women) to disseminate environmental awareness via culturally appropriate channels (street plays, community discussions, local songs) rather than top-down messaging. 
• Engaging school and college students in debates and awareness sessions as agents of change. 
• Establishing ward-level committees including local civil-society stakeholders to sustain awareness campaigns and maintain community engagement over time. 
• Operating the digital learning hub (solar-powered) - as a space for climate-adaptation education, access to information on municipal services, early-warning systems, and community knowledge sharing. 

This multi-channel, culturally sensitive communication strategy supported inclusion, gender-sensitivity, and long-term engagement.

Funding and resource mobilization combined international development funds with local co-financing:

• Core financing: €95,000 provided under the ULL / ERUP project. 
• Co-financing: €10,000 contributed by implementing NGO (Anando) / local stakeholders. 
• In-kind contributions: Technical support from DAE; volunteered time and effort by community members; use of municipal open spaces and enabling permissions from local authorities.
• Human resources: Community mobilizers, local NGO staff, municipal officers, residents (for participatory activities), trainers and experts.

The project delivered tangible benefits across environmental, social and economic dimensions:

• Lowered indoor and ambient temperatures - mitigating heat-island effects and improving living comfort for residents. 
• About 150 households transformed parts of their dwellings into vegetable gardens, improving food self-sufficiency and offering a potential source of income through surplus sale. 
• Increased awareness among community members, especially women and youth, on climate adaptation, municipal services, and environmental management. The digital learning hub served as a key information platform. 
• Enhanced social cohesion and equitable access to green/open spaces. Public space upgrades allowed broader community benefit beyond the selected households. 
• Set the foundation for a replicable model of inclusive, climate-sensitive urban environmental management, potentially influencing municipal governance and future development planning in Satkhira and beyond. 

Despite positive outcomes, the project faced several constraints and limitations:

• Limited scale of pilot: 150 households represent a modest share of the informal settlement population, broader transformation would require scaling up resources significantly.
• Sustainability of maintenance: Ensuring long-term upkeep of green spaces and community gardens depends heavily on community commitment and municipal follow-up, risk remains if engagement declines.
• Institutional constraints: Local municipality lacked a dedicated environmental management department; coordination among municipal authorities, civil society and community required continuous facilitation. 
• Resource and funding limitations: While funding covered pilot phase, scaling up will demand more substantial, sustained investment.
• Awareness and behavior change: Changing habits around environmental management, waste, maintenance, and community ownership is gradual, initial enthusiasm may wane without continuous support.

The Satkhira ULL / ERUP demonstrates a promising model for urban climate resilience and social inclusion, combining low-cost green infrastructure, community-led environmental management, and capacity building. Its participatory, inclusive and gender-sensitive approach makes it particularly well suited for informal settlements in climate-vulnerable cities.

Key success factors for replicability:

• Strong multi-stakeholder collaboration (municipality, local NGO, residents, national agencies).
• Context-specific design: adapting interventions (home gardening, public-space greening) to local socio-economic and climatic conditions.
• Community ownership and engagement, through participatory planning, local multipliers, social mobilization.
• Modest financial resources: the pilot was achieved with limited funds (under €100k), demonstrating that budget constraints need not block meaningful interventions.
• Capacity building and knowledge dissemination, via training and a digital learning hub, to embed long-term resilience and adaptive behaviors.

In conclusion, replicating this model in similar Bangladeshi municipalities, or in other climate-vulnerable, resource-constrained cities, could significantly enhance urban resilience, improve living conditions, and foster social inclusion. The ULL methodology offers a replicable pathway toward more equitable and climate-sensitive urban development.

• Cities CHALLENGE / ULL page for Satkhira — “Enhancing Resilience of Urban Poor” 
• Project factsheet “Bangladesh: Enhancing Resilience of Urban Poor (ERUP)” by GIZ. 
• GIZ programme - Liveable and Inclusive Cities for All (LICA)
• World Bank: Urban Heat Management in the Global South (Handbook)

Anando (local NGO) in Satkhira.
Implementation lead.

For more information, coordination or replication queries, contact GIZ as the funding and technical partner of the ULL / ERUP initiative.