For decades, Saleemul Huq, a Bangladeshi intellect and climate activist, urged representatives of poorer countries from the global south to “tell it like it is.” Farmers, politicians, activists needed to make global leaders aware of the nitty gritty of the impacts emissions from richer nations have on the poorest of the poor, he said. At the highest levels of climate diplomacy, he argued that richer nations should pay for the losses and damages climate change was amplifying across the landscape.

Huq died last October, just before the 28^th meeting of the UN parties charged with considering approaches to climate change, but his voice resonated across the years. At COP28 in Dubai in 2023, delegates agreed to create what Huq had long sought, a new international “Loss & Damages” fund through which richer countries would help poorer nations cope with costly climate impacts.

On May 14, 11 students from the University of Montana headed to Bangladesh with a goal of “seeing it like it is.” In the South Asian country, climate change impacts unfold quickly and slowly over the world’s largest delta. The class will arrive in the wake of the country’s longest heat wave on record. The heat wave, intensified by human activities that are trapping greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, lasted for 24 days of heat over 38 degrees C (100 F), with several days exceeding 104 degrees F.

The class will spend several days in the capital city of Dhaka, meeting with science, culture and NGO leaders as well as journalists covering the climate crisis. They’ll spend a couple of days in Khulna, the nation’s second largest port city. There, we’ll consider climate migration and the slums – some very old, some very new – that are growing as people leave village life in search of economic, food and shelter security.

The port of Khulna is the jumping off point for boats bound for the world’s largest mangrove forest. The Sundarbans line the Bay of Bengal in India and Bangladesh, protecting the coast from the full force of cyclones that rise up in the bay. We will travel by boat for several days, seeing villages that have adapted to climate intensified storms, and others still recovering from a major cyclone that swept the area last spring. We’ll meet the forest guard charged with protecting the ecosystem. And subsistence farmers, fishermen and honey gatherers who sometimes chafe at new restrictions aimed at maintaining the area’s biodiversity.

As we “see it like it is” we will work to “tell it like it is,” through daily blog updates. The twin posts and photographs aim to capture the experience of travelers new to the region as well as reported briefs and insights into the lessons we might learn from a dynamic place, well-versed in the challenge of a changing global climate and economy.