Category: Daily Star Article
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Closer to making polluters pay
Last week, at the general assembly of the United Nations in New York, a resolution was adopted by consensus to ask the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an advisory opinion on whether impacts of human-induced climate change are a violation of international human rights. This resolution was put forward by the government of Vanuatu…
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LLA lessons feature in annual Gobeshona conference
The seven-day round-the-clock conference was a platform for local leaders of LLA from over 30 countries to share their knowledge and experience.
Last week, my young colleagues at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) spent seven days at a hotel in Dhaka hosting the third annual Gobeshona Global Conference on locally led adaptation (LLA) and resilience. This is now a well-established, fully online conference that takes place round the clock, for seven days,…
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Global loss and damage initiative launched in Dhaka
It aims to support both governments and civil societies in the vulnerable countries to enhance their knowledge of and responses to the adverse impacts of human-induced climate change.
This week, the UK-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), together with the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), launched a global initiative in Dhaka to address loss and damage from human-induced climate change. The initiative, called the Alliance for Locally-Led Approaches for Transformative Action on Loss and Damage (ALL ACT on…
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Making Khulna a green and fair climate city
I have just returned from a visit to the Khulna region, both Khulna city and the Sundarbans. With the Padma Bridge cutting down the journey between Dhaka and Khulna to just a few hours means that the Khulna region is already seeing development at a much faster rate than before. This has both positive and…
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The three eras of loss and damage
The world has entered the third era of loss and damage from human-induced climate change. In the first era, the experts were focused on completely avoiding the potential losses and damages from climate change by stopping – or at least drastically reducing – greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which caused the global temperature to rise. This…
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Taxing air travel could fund climate victims
Last year, the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) for climate change agreed to establish a loss and damage (L&D) finance facility to support the recovery from loss and damage caused by the increasing impacts of climate change. The decision to establish an L&D fund can be regarded as just a political win; it is…
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Bangladesh’s key role in combatting climate change
As we enter the third year of this decade, we have only seven more years until 2030 to tackle the major global problems of climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Unfortunately, the world is not on track to meet the targets it has set for itself, so we need to work doubly hard…
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Everything you need to know about the Loss and Damage Fund
The series of extreme weather events in 2022 fuelled by climate change that devastated lives and livelihoods of millions – from the floods in Pakistan and China to droughts in Somalia, Ethiopia, Brazil, and Europe – set a clarion call for the long-awaited climate finance, also known as loss and damage finance. After years of…
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The who’s and how’s of allocating loss and damage funds
During the negotiations on funding for loss and damage in COP27 in Egypt last November, representatives of developed countries had a lot of reservations about such a proposal. My answer to them was that, while their questions were quite legitimate, they would only get answers after we received a political commitment from their leaders to…
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Reflections on the climate change actions of 2022
The year 2022 was indeed a critical year for tackling climate change at global, national, and local levels. Let me start at the personal level by acknowledging two major events for me. The first was at the beginning of 2022 when I was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by the British Government…
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Bangladesh takes another step in leading global climate adaptation
On December 11, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina formally launched the new Global Hub on Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) in Dhaka along with the foreign minister and environment minister, and Ban Ki-Moon, head of the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA). The new Global Hub on LLA will be located in the Dhaka office of the GCA,…
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What Bangladesh must do now as a global climate leader
The recent agreement by all countries to establish a new fund for loss and damage from human-induced climate change at COP27 was a simple recognition of an unfortunate reality that has existed for a long time. The reality is that the impacts that are now scientifically attributable to global temperature rise are now happening every…