On Friday, April 19th, Dr. Shammin, Associate Professor and Chair of the Environmental Studies Program, gave a talk on his LIASE supported trip to the Rohingya Refugee camps in Bangladesh.
His talk was organized in three parts; history of the refugee crisis in Bangladesh, his experience in the camps, and where he’s going with his research. Dr. Shammin emphasized that the Rohingya Refugee crisis was not just a humanitarian crisis, but also an environmental and social one. He discussed how inside the camps, residents are challenged by issues of water and sanitation, landslides, earthquakes, flash floods, and more. Further, there are also issues of gender-based violence within the camps. Outside of the camps, there are problems with groundwater depletion and contamination, deforestation, human-wildlife conflicts, sewage treatment and disposal, and more.
For the next steps in Dr. Shammin’s research, he is conducting research with colleagues internationally on comprehensive environmental management and conservation-humanitarian responses in refugee camps for his end goal of developing a Resilience Framework for Refugee Response.