Zahid Shashoto
Bangladesh
MSc Environmental Change and Management, 2021
Hertford College
Funding: Oxford-Hoffmann
Zahid's work is centred around empowering marginalised communities through land rights, locally-led water governance, disaster risk management, and climate change adaptation.
As a programme development specialist at Uttaran, a grassroots NGO in Bangladesh, he uses grounded and bottom-up approaches to design strategies and programmes that address the interconnected environmental and social challenges faced by coastal communities struggling to adapt to climatic and economic shocks. In addition to his work at Uttaran, Zahid is also leading the organisation's first social business venture, empowering climate-vulnerable communities by improving livelihoods through market-driven solutions.
Zahid has been involved in a diverse range of environmental and social development activities from an early age. He holds a BSc in Environmental Management (2018) from North South University (Dhaka, Bangladesh), and an MSc in Environment Change and Management (2022) from the University of Oxford. His dissertation was on people's negative coping strategies post-disaster and how humanitarian organisations influence them allowed me to analyse humanitarian organisations' structure, funding mechanisms, and post-disaster response phases through a bottom-up approach.
Zahid also serves as a member of the governing board for the Climate Justice Resilience Fund, a registered public charity in the United States. Through the participatory grant-making initiatives, they support grassroots organisations across East Africa, the Bay of Bengal, and the Arctic regions to support communities to adapt to climate change and address issues of loss and damage.
Zahid is currently based in Bangladesh.
