A reminder that the main outcome of the conference - which finishes at lunchtime (Dhaka time) on Thursday - will be a book drawing together experiences and information presented in Dhaka this week.

Conference co-organiser Saleemul Huq of the International Institute for Environment and Development says,"We're making good progress, moving towards making a consensus on new learning, sharing experiences, drawing lessons from those experiences in terms of what works and what doesn't work."

The book will not consist of the proceedings of the conference. It will be based around conference themes "which will draw the lessons we hope everybody has brought with them."

The aim is a book of high academic quality "because in the academic literature the hundreds, if not thousands, of activities at the community level are seldom reflected". There are many case studies and much anecdotal information but they have not been synthesised into an academic account.

Huq points out that the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change is preparing its fifth assessment report, which will be issued in about two years time. It will have four chapters on adaptation, and the conference organisers hope their book will be a major input.

Noting that scaling-up is the the theme of the conference, Huq says, "This scaling-up idea is new. At our previous conference we were still sharing experiences. For this one, we didn't just ask participants to say what they did but we asked 'What have you learned from that' so we have a higher level of intellectual content. Hopefully, we'll be able to synthesise that at a broader, more analytical level than in the past."

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