1st Sustainability Festival, IUBAT-2022

The Department of Environmental Science (DES) of IUBAT organized the 1st Sustainability Festival-2022 at IUBAT on 29th October. This festival involved the first semester students from the ten disciplines for poster competition on sustainability. There were 300 students took part in the competition followed by a seminar.

Dr. Huhua Fan, Education Program Specialist of UNESCO graced as the chief guest, Vice Chancellor Professor Dr. Abdur Rab presided over the ceremony. Prof. Dr M. Ataur Rahman, Chair of Environmental Science Department had a welcome speech. The other speakers were Prof Dr Hamida Akter Begum, Pro Vice Chancellor, Professor Selina Nargis, Treasurer and Director Administration of IUBAT. Dr. Ferdous Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science, was the Convener of the 1st Sustainability Festival-2022 in IUBAT. The Panel Judge for the Poster Competition Prof.Dr. Golam Rasul also addressed in the program. Other judges were Prof Dr Hasnat Alamgir, Dr Sayma Ahmed and Dr. Md. Tarekh Rasul. Assistant Professor Dr. Md. Rehan Dastagir delivered a vote of thanks. All the speakers emphasized that the environmental culture to be adopted on individual scale to manage prosperous and sustainable future bot globally and regionally.

In particular, IUBAT always promotes sustainability as a result it started a sustainability program in 2008 and from 2013 IUBAT pioneered sustainability courses under the IISS and Department of Environmental Science. With this course, almost 15000 students of IUBAT learned sustainability practices. The aim of this course is to provide sustainability knowledge for student’s lifelong learning and practice. Till now it is one of the successful courses in IUBAT that builds environmental awareness among student communities to ensure sustainability practices for better environmental condition. On the other hand, SDG is a global target and Bangladesh suppose to achieve this goal by 2030. Since IUBAT is the pioneers for sustainability activities in Bangladesh therefore, IUBAT wants to extend their activities into the community level organizing national level ‘Sustainability Olympiad’ for the first time in Bangladesh in the near future. As a pilot project of the ‘Sustainability Olympiad’ IUBAT organized ‘1st Sustainability Fest’ in IUBAT targeting First Semester’s Students to build the capacity of the young generation for sustainability in Bangladesh. The aim of this Fest is to discover some creative ideas from students for solving sustainability problem both globally and regionally. This is how the students will be able to contribute their sustainability knowledge into the communities for creating better world. At the same time, IUBAT would like lead organizing the First Sustainability Olympiad in Bangladesh.