A few days ago in Copenhagen, Denmark, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the synthesis report of its fifth assessment. This particular report did not report anything new beyond the reports of working group one (on climate science), working group two (on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation) and working group three (on responses) which were released earlier this year. …

As part of my time at ICCCAD, I worked as a translator for visiting researcher Kathinka Evertsen. Her research focused on differences in the migration experiences of men and women from the Bhola District. Bhola is heavily affected by river erosion, flooding and storms, and is among the areas most affected by climate change in Bangladesh. A part of Ms. Evertsen’s research …

I recently attended the Climate Knowledge Brokers Workshop at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at Sussex University in Brighton, UK. The workshop brought together members of the Climate Knowledge Brokers (CKB) Group. This group is organised via a Coordination Hub hosted by the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP) and a CKB Steering Committee chaired by the Climate …

Kathinka and I arrived in Elisha, a town on Bangladesh’s Bhola Island, early Sunday morning, tumbling out of the auto into a cluster of tin-shed buildings huddled on the bank of the Meghna River. The water teemed with fishing boats, wooden half-moons coughing black smoke and bearing tattered flags. We watched them from the road – a narrow band of …

Bangladesh has long been a country of movement. There are as many reasons for migrating as there are people, but the first thing a migrant will typically tell you is that he or she moved for better economic opportunities. Bangladesh has also always been a country of dangerous weather, and, as climate change becomes a bigger problem, this is increasingly …

I have just returned from an exhilarating and exhausting week in New York, where I was one of 38 representatives from global civil society invited by Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to attend the UN Climate Summit. The week kicked off on 20 September, when I was invited to spend the afternoon with SouthBronxUnite – a community of people affected by Hurricane Sandy …

I am conducting my research on children-focused disaster risk reduction (DRR) programs and how they enable children to reduce vulnerabilities to the climate-induced hazards like flood and cyclones. Bangladesh is a disaster-prone country due to climate change.  According to a report on DRR for Bangladesh, climate experts predict that climate-induced hazards like floods and cyclones will not only become more …

Climate-induced rural livelihood loss and consequent rural-urban migration is a common scenario in developing countries. However, little is currently known about the dynamics of the process of climate-displaced migration and the experiences of associated migrants. My research has been an attempt to understand how poor climate-induced migrants perceive their urban conditions in hydro-geophysical and socio-economic terms.Dhaka City, the densely populated …

I thought the field trip would be nice escape from my routine in Dhaka but I never imagined it would become an inspiration to my work on loss and damage. More often than not, loss and damage is perceived as a calculation of monetary impacts following an extreme event, and more controversially as a method of compensation to developing countries. …

During our journey back on a ferry to Dhaka from Bagerhaat, I kept thinking about the unending resiliency of our people to adapt with the nature’s fury that often disrupts their lives.  I also learned a critical lesson from Dr. Huq.  That people, above all, are at the core of development in Bangladesh. Our field trip took us to several …