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.
From vulnerability to resilience to prosperity
The development gains and hard-earned productivity of Bangladesh are at risk of being inverted if the 1.5 degree Celsius limit of the Paris Agreement is breached.
Covid-19 and climate change: World leaders must tackle both
In past weeks, there have been a number of significant events which may seem unconnected but are actually deeply connected in terms of whether the world is able to successfully come out of the current Covid-19 pandemic and also deal with the looming catastrophe of climate change.
Can the G7 leaders rise to the occasion?
The leaders of the G7 countries—consisting of the US, UK, Canada, Japan, Italy, France and Germany—will be holding their annual meeting in the UK in the second week of June and have a number of major issues on their agenda, including how to roll out global vaccination against the coronavirus and how to tackle climate change.
Tackling three global emergencies at once
The world is having to tackle three major emergencies at the same time. The first is obviously the Covid-19 pandemic that is still raging around the world, the second is climate change, which is also getting much worse every year, and finally, there is biodiversity loss, which will mean the loss of up to a million species if we cannot stem the tide.
Now is the time to focus on loss and damage from climate change
The year 2020 will be remembered as not just the year of the pandemic, but also for the experienced human-induced climate change impacts,
Beyond resilience, we need to prosper in the face of climate change
Last week, I wrote in this daily about the need for Bangladesh to take a “whole of society” approach to international diplomacy on tackling climate change globally, rather than depending on the annual Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which meets only once a year for two weeks.
Bangladesh’s climate diplomacy needs to take a whole-of-society approach
One can argue that the issue of tackling climate change in Bangladesh has already achieved a whole-of-government approach, and is also rapidly moving towards a whole-of-society approach. However, our international diplomacy on tackling climate change also needs to develop both approaches.
The G7 countries need to step up on climate finance
One of the positive outcomes of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change back in 2015 was a pledge from the rich countries to provide USD 100 billion a year, starting from 2020, to help the poorer countries tackle climate change through both mitigation and adaptation actions.
Are the climate change Conference of Parties still fit for purpose?
Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), all governments of the nearly 200 countries that have ratified the treaty meet twice a year to review progress and make decisions about next steps.
On President Biden’s Climate Summit and John Kerry’s visit to Dhaka
US President Biden’s first act upon being sworn in as President on January 20, 2021, was to officially notify the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that he was withdrawing former President Trump’s withdrawal letter from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and that the United States was rejoining the Paris Agreement.