Category: Daily Star Article
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Adaptation strategies must be bottom-up
There are two major outcomes and messages on adaptation to climate change that have been mentioned in the recently published Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of Working Group II (WG2) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The first one says that the impacts of climate change are evident all around the world—in both poor…
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Developing countries are leading climate actions
The Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) was launched over 10 years ago, by then President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, and has been operating since then with a different head of government in charge of it for a two-year tenure. The current chair of CVF is Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh, whose term is scheduled…
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Another grim warning on climate change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a global body under the United Nations (UN), has been conducting periodic reviews (every six or seven years) of the state of scientific knowledge on climate change for the last 30 years. The agency is currently in the process of publishing its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) in three…
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The world needs to support the victims of climate change
In the last few weeks, three separate cyclones hit the island of Madagascar and then Mozambique, causing loss of life and damage to infrastructure. Even in the UK, Storm Eunice caused much damage. These are just a few examples of the loss and damage attributable to human-induced climate change, and in every such incident, it…
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Locally led adaptation: We can lead the world
The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) was set up with its headquarters in the Netherlands a couple of years ago, and has already developed into a major platform focusing on supporting countries to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change. It has already set up regional centres in China and Africa, and is about…
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How to fix the failures of climate finance
One of the positive outcomes of the COP26 held in Glasgow, Scotland in November 2021 was a universal acknowledgement of the failure of developed countries to deliver climate finance to developing countries, and even of developing countries themselves to actually deliver to the most vulnerable communities within their own territories. While it is good that…
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Developed countries can’t get out of paying for climate impacts
On the last official day of the 26th UN climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland last year, over 150 countries representing more than five billion people put forward a proposal for the creation of the Glasgow Facility on Financing Loss and Damage to combat human-induced climate change as part of the final Glasgow Climate Pact.…
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Tackling the climate crisis needs daily actions
We are living in the era of impacts by human-induced climate change, which requires actions by everyone on the planet every single day if we are going to reach the goals set to tackle the climate crisis by 2030. We have no time to lose; every single day counts. This means that we can no…
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How do we reach 2030 climate goals?
The year 2030 is the target year for the world to achieve all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations. In addition to the SDGs, 2030 is also the year by which all countries party to the Paris Agreement on climate change must keep the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius,…
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2021 was a critical year for climate actions
The year 2021 has been significant in climate change discussions, in a decade that is already quite important in terms of tackling the climate crisis. This was the year when the world finally acknowledged that human-induced climate change due to the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from burning fossil fuels for over a century had…
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Now it’s time to start preparing for COP27
As someone who has attended every single climate change conference under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—the Conference of Parties (COP)—one thing I have learnt is that waiting until a COP is held to prepare to get something out of it simply does not work. If a country or a group of…
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An appeal to the UN secretary-general
The current secretary-general of the United Nations, Antonio Guiterres, has already established himself as a champion for actions to tackle climate change to all countries and actors, and has recently been quite outspoken in his criticism of the poor outcomes of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), held in Glasgow last month. While there was…