POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The Climate Action Summit in New York has failed to deliver
The world leaders who are responsible for emitting most of the greenhouse gases are not willing to take the requisite actions at the scale and pace that is required.
We are not on track for 2030 climate targets
We are at the halfway point of this time frame; if we review the current situation, the progress is not good.
Macron’s support for an ‘adaptation pact’ with Bangladesh
Macron first told us that he had had a one-on-one conversation with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina already in which he’d offered assistance from France to Bangladesh to work on an energy transition partnership.
Scale up climate change adaptation as soon as possible
While Bangladesh has been doing quite well in adapting to climate change, there is still a long way to go with not much time to waste. Serious actions need to be taken urgently to boost the country’s resilience.
In funding climate actions, we can be more creative
Leaders who attend COP28 will have to rise to the occasion with the sense of urgency that the climate change crisis requires today.
What our new climate envoy can do for Bangladesh
Last month the PM Sheikh Hasina appointed Saber Hossain Chowdhury, member of parliament, as her climate envoy.
Enter ‘global boiling’
“The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.”
We need a loss and damage report from the IPCC
A special report on loss and damage will capture the significant amount of scientific research being carried out now on different aspects of tackling climate change.
Measuring the global goal on climate change adaptation
In the Paris Agreement on climate change, which was agreed on in December 2015 at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
Challenges for the new Global Commission for Adaptation
Last week in the Hague, the Netherlands a new Global Commission for Adaptation to Climate Change was launched with the former Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, Bill Gates, and Kristalina Georgieva, head of the World Bank as the three heads.
It's worse than we thought
The United Nation's scientific body on climate change, namely the Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has just released a special report which is a scientific as well as political report of great significance and could be a game-changer in galvanising enhanced action to tackle climate change.
Achieving complete renewable energy reliance
Ten years ago, under the leadership of then President Nasheed of the Maldives, the leaders of the most vulnerable developing countries came together to form the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF).
How long-term planning can work
Bangladesh has a strong tradition of medium term planning through the periodic Five Year Plans, of which we are now in the 7th Plan. At the same time, the country has a large number of professional planners both within the Planning Commission as well as embedded within the Planning Department of every ministry who help develop the sectoral plans for each ministry.
Thinking outside the box
The issue of loss and damage from climate change has been a politically sensitive topic in the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as developed countries see it as opening the way for claiming compensation from them based on their liability.
Tackling poverty and climate change at the same time
Over the coming decades, at the global level as well as in Bangladesh we will be faced with two major challenges: tackling poverty and climate change. Although at first glance the two issues may not seem to be linked, I will argue that we cannot tackle either without also tackling the other at the same time. This is equally true for both the global and the national level, especially for poor countries like Bangladesh.
We have crossed the tipping point on climate change
Until now, scientists working on climate change have been talking about the scenarios, forecasts and even predictions of adverse impacts due to human induced climate change that would occur in the future if we failed to prevent it from happening.
Tackling climate change in the Barind Tract
In almost every global assessment of which countries are most vulnerable to climate change impacts, Bangladesh comes out as either first or at least in the top five, depending on the criteria used in the assessment.
A note on the environmental aspects of Rohingya camps
It has been nearly a year since the latest influx of the Rohingya people after they were forcibly driven out of Myanmar and into Bangladesh. Since last August, over 700,000 refugees, mostly women and children, have been housed, fed, clothed and provided with medical attention by a combination of Bangladesh's military and civilian authorities and NGOs as well as the UN and other international agencies, of whom there are over a hundred working day and night in the Rohingya camps.