About Us
CEPR promotes sustainable development, environmental protection, community participation, and inclusive growth for a greener, fairer, and more sustainable future.
At a Glance
Institutional Overview
Institutional Registry & Contact Information
| Official Name | Centre for Environment and Participatory Research Society (CEPR) |
| Legal Status | Registered as a Non-Profit Research & Development Society under the Societies Registration Act, XXI of 1860 |
| Core Operational Focus | Climate Change Mitigation, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), Rights-Based Humanitarian Action, Climate-Resilient Health Systems, Policy, and Social Justice |
| Geographic Headquarters | Khulna, South-Western Coastal Region, Bangladesh (Frontline of Global Climate Impact) |
| Strategic Modalities | Interdisciplinary Action Research, Participatory Community Models, Policy Advocacy, Project Implementation, and Constituency Building |
| Target Demographics | Low-income populations, climate-displaced communities, women, children, and marginalized coastal rights-holders |
| Key Collaboration Networks | National civil society groups, international development organizations, public institutions, and leading research organizations |
Vision
Building a green, just, and inclusive society where sustainable development meets human dignity.
Mission
To deliver high-impact, science-backed insights and innovative strategies that empower decision-makers, elevate communities, and address the critical 21st-century challenges of climate change, natural resource degradation, accelerating population growth, and systemic poverty.
Core Pillars of the Work
Pillar I: Ecology, Environment, and Climate Change (DRR & Humanitarian Response)
CEPR designs and executes comprehensive, interdisciplinary programs that synthesize rigorous natural and social sciences into practical climate policies, eco-education, and community-driven conservation actions. Recognizing the severe vulnerability of coastal Bangladesh, our operational model includes an integrated, rights-based humanitarian emergency mechanism. We manage the entire continuum of disaster response—encompassing proactive climate change adaptation, disaster prevention, hazard preparedness, rapid direct response, and long-term socio-ecological rehabilitation in environments ravaged by floods, severe cyclones, droughts, and macro-climatic disruptions.
Pillar II: Social Welfare and Policy Research
Carry out research and foster discussion on all aspects of social policy. The aim is to reflect the experiences and views of the rights holders on policy interventions and to communicate research findings with stakeholders in thinking through their implications with a view to bringing about change. CEPR’s thematic fields of inquiry focus on: education, rights-based healthcare delivery, women and child protection systems, comprehensive social security safety nets, and family stability mechanisms for low-income communities.
Pillar III: Economic and Social Justice
Enabling advocacy and campaigns in economic policy for social justice. The aim is to examine public policies and development intervention strategies by exposing their underlying paradigms and impacts on the people and exploring alternative approaches to public policy questions. Considerations include the roles of institutions, government policies, market structures, distributional issues, international trade and finance, and economic geography in explaining development and welfare.
Pillar IV: Climate-Resilient Health Systems & Community Biosecurity
Integrate interdisciplinary public health architectures with climate change adaptation to support regional community resilience. This operational framework focuses heavily on the tracking and mitigation of coastal water salinity-driven reproductive health anomalies (such as gestational hypertension and pre-eclampsia among coastal women), designs local community-managed climate-adapted water purification infrastructures, deploys localized epidemiological predictive systems for climate-triggered diarrheal and vector-borne outbreaks (cholera, dengue), and provides critical technical inputs to climate-proof vulnerable primary healthcare facilities against severe cyclone surges.
Core Values
Interdisciplinary Research & Science-Policy Linkages: CEPR’s research is anchored in the finest available climate and environmental sciences and intentionally combined with the social sciences. We address the complicated challenges that environmental changes, resource shortage, and energy transitions pose to human survival and ecosystem integrity. Solutions prioritize a triple-helix approach blending robust government leadership, market-driven private sector enterprise, and organized citizen mobilization.
Meaningful & Inclusive Participation: We emphasize authentic, bottom-up participation across all levels of public governance and decision-making. Through structured community education, local awareness programs, and civic empowerment, CEPR ensures that vulnerable groups are transformed from passive recipients to active architects of local governance.
Action Research for Transformative Change: CEPR adopts an integrated knowledge management methodology centered on Participatory Action Research. We elevate local community observations, indigenous ecological wisdom, and lived experiences into credible scientific datasets, fostering a critical consciousness that equips local populations to engage in practical and political actions for systematic improvement.
Constituency Building & Policy Literacy: To drive sustainable social transformation, CEPR maintains a specialized institutional wing dedicated to policy literacy and perspective building. This unit cultivates grassroots ‘change agents’ by collaborating with civil society organizations, local coalitions, and broader social movements. Furthermore, our field projects serve a dual purpose as live educational templates to reach and inform a wider macro-audience.