Stephan Uttom Rozario

With the aim to improve native crop farming capacity within villages, Caritas Bangladesh promotes ways for farmers to identify and save indigenous seeds as well as natural methods for cultivating them.

A centuries-old technique for growing floating beds of vegetables — adapted to put the invasive water hyacinth to use — is gaining popularity in Bangladesh amid flooding and sea rise worsened by climate change.

In the wake of the August uprising in Bangladesh when former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stepped down, many Catholic schools in the region remain closed, and activists are calling for the reform of Christian-run banks.

"I call on leaders in credit unions to improve our religious education, bible studies, moral education … Because financial institutions have a lot of opportunities here," said Bangladesh Bishop Subrato Boniface Gomes.

Bangladesh's tiny Catholic community is responding to environmental degradation in the country with conservation efforts by groups who have been inspired by Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si'. 

The Forest Department's plans to construct walled gardens, guesthouses and an artificial lake in Madhupur will have serious impacts on 25,000 Indigenous people living in the area, say tribal activists.

In Bangladesh, the long-term climate and economic impacts of a 2009 cyclone led to hardships, including reliance on moneylenders through an arrangement that has been compared to modern slavery.