Category: Daily Star Article
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The political dimension of COP25
The 25th Conference of Parties (COP25) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) being held in Madrid, Spain is now half way through with the technical level negotiations having been completed and the ministers now arriving in to lock the final political agreements. There are two major politically sensitive issues which will…
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COP25 off to a good start
The 25th annual Conference of the Parties (COP25) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) opened in Madrid, Spain on Monday with a high-level event of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF). There, in the presence of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the current chair of the CVF, President Hilda Heine of the Marshall…
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GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE NEGOTIATIONSRich countries must pay for climate loss and damage
The global negotiations on how to tackle climate change take place in December at the annual Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is hosted in a different continent each year. This year it was the turn of South America, and COP25 was supposed to have been…
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Climate emergency, planetary emergency and our survival
The Bangladesh parliament has declared a planetary emergency in a resolution adopted a few days ago. This is indeed a major initiative and the parliamentarians should be applauded for it. Although other countries’ parliaments—such as the United Kingdom—had declared climate emergency, Bangladesh is the first country to declare a planetary emergency. The difference is that…
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How can insurance play a role in tackling climate change?
The 15th annual global microinsurance conference was held last week in Bangladesh for the first time with the theme of “Coping with climate risk”. It was inaugurated by the prime minister who felt that the insurance industry could play a key role in not only managing recovery from natural disasters, but also in tackling climate…
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Developing more towns – Key to climate resilience
Bangladesh is facing two global megatrends with significant national repercussions. The first is the rapidly urbanising world we live in, where half the global population is already living in cities and towns and Bangladesh will soon cross that threshold as well. The government of Bangladesh under the direction of the prime minister has taken up…
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We need to declare a planetary emergency
Humanity has made a “tragic, desperate mess” of the planet, said Sir David Attenborough, the 93-year-old naturalist and documentary filmmaker on announcing his new series of documentaries called “Seven Worlds, One Planet” due to be broadcast on the BBC. He has spent a lifetime making iconic documentaries on the natural wonders of both the earth…
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Real development needs nature-based solutions
We are all immensely proud of the economic development being achieved by Bangladesh and looking forward to our graduation from Least Developed Country (LDC) status to middle income country status within the next few years. However, as we move our development pathway forward we are facing a very significant fork in the road ahead and…
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The challenge from Greta Thunberg on tackling climate change
Last week in New York, the United Nations Secretary General (UNSG) Antonia Guitteres held a Global Action Summit where he invited world leaders from selected countries only to come with “plans not speeches” to raise the level of ambition to tackle climate change. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was amongst those invited but US President…
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Coming transformation on climate change in the US
We have known about the denial of climate change by president Trump of the United States and that he has decided to withdraw his country from the Paris Agreement and is also actively undermining efforts in the US to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. However, joining Greta Thunberg on the climate strike and march in…
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Building capacity to implement the Paris Agreement
The Asia-Pacific Climate Week was held at the UN Conference Centre, Bangkok from September 2 to 6, 2019. The objective was to have a regional dialogue on how to rachet up ambition in mitigation and speed up adaptation actions. This event has also been held in some other regions. It covered a whole range of…
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Climate crisis: ‘Dorian’ brings home new urgencies
The devastation caused by Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas over the last week or so has illustrated quite clearly that even though the Caribbean has a well-developed early warning system for hurricanes and is also a part of the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), that deals with the residual impacts of such hurricanes, it…