Iffat Nawaz
Environmentalist

Iffat Nawaz is a development specialist with a special focus on environment. After getting her undergraduate degree on Bio Resources Engineering and her masters on Environmental Sciences from the University of Maryland, Iffat worked for the Foundation for Environmental Security and Sustainability (FESS).

During her years at FESS she got the chance to work in environmental issues in Uganda, Nepal and the Dominican Republic. Through this process she realised her love for nature and started travelling to explore more of it in the South and Central America as well as the United States of America and Canada. To explore more, she got her open water scuba diving certification and has done around 50 dives in the southern barrier reef.

Iffat's dream was to return to Bangladesh, work in the environment sector, as she left the country when she was younger. She finally got the opportunity to do so in 2010 and Iffat returned to Bangladesh after working in development for 9 years outside of the country. The job that brought her to Bangladesh was a project, titled 'Integrated Protected Area Co-Management', (IPAC) funded by USAID.

Iffat Nawaz came as the head of communication for this project, to build conservation awareness regarding 25 protected areas of Bangladesh (including Sundarbans) and wetlands. She started branding this environment project as Nishorgo Network and working with the local forest and wetland dependent communities and the government counterparts. By using the platform of collaborative management of natural resources, IPAC has been improving the lives of the nature dependents as well as bringing transparency in government practices and changing policies towards nature conservation.

Iffat started to work with these local communities, understanding their needs and disseminating messages to them as well as working with them to communicate their messages to the government and the general population of Bangladesh.

To involve the entire country with this movement, Iffat just launched a campaign on responsible tourism. Many of Bangladesh's protected areas have high number of visitors, the Lawacherra forest in Srimangal for instance. With the rise in the popularity of tourism in Bangladesh a significantly increased number of people have started visiting these places but without much thought have been contributing towards the destruction of these places as well.

Ecotourism is a concept that has become quite popular in Bangladesh and one can buy an ecotourism package if he/she wishes to but responsible tourism is something for which one has to change from within; to become a responsible tourist one has to change their habits.

Iffat's goal is to work with the Bangladeshi community and bring forth the stories of these forests and wetlands and of their people and to hopefully raise awareness in peoples' minds to a point where they become part of nature conservation, learn about climate change and take ownership of their own environment.

Compiled by Correspondent