The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed 30 years ago at the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, by all the governments of the world. The first annual Conference of Parties (COP1) was held in Berlin, Germany, with the then Environment Minister of Germany, Angela Merkel, as COP President in 1995. Since then, there …

The United States has been historically the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs), which has been a major driver of human-induced climate change. And even though China has recently overtaken the US as the biggest emitter at present, the US remains the biggest single cause of the problem since the start of the industrial revolution nearly two centuries ago. Thus, …

The concept of human-induced climate change originated from the scientific community based on the periodic assessment reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was then picked up by policymakers at global levels. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was set up as a global treaty under which countries pledged to tackle climate change, initially …

The issue of human displacement due to the adverse impacts of human-induced climate change used to be a topic of anticipatory actions, but it has become an active problem here and now. This is because the world has now entered the new era of losses and damages that are attributable to the fact that global temperature has already risen over …

Over the last few weeks, I have been in Europe, and it seemed that everywhere I went, there were record-breaking weather events. And these events are unequivocally linked to human-induced climate change due to the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), which are causing the global temperature to rise. Let me briefly describe some of these extreme weather events that I …

This past week, the entire country has been rightly celebrating the successful completion and inauguration of the historic Padma Bridge, which links the south-western part of Bangladesh to its northern and eastern regions with prospects of unhindered transport between the two major regions of the country. However, while the prospects for economic progress are certainly most welcome, it may also …

The global environmental movement started in 1972, with the first global environment conference held in Stockholm, Sweden, hosted by then Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. Among the heads of governments who also attended was the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who famously declared that environment and poverty were two major global issues that needed to be tackled together. Since …

At the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow last November, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, speaking on behalf of 55 vulnerable developing countries under the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), put forward a demand to set up a facility to finance loss and damage from human-induced climate change. This demand was included in the draft of the Glasgow …

A decade ago, developed countries pledged to provide developing countries with USD 100 billion each year, from 2020 onwards. The year 2020 came and went and the USD 100 billion was not delivered even in 2021. At COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021, the developed countries apologised for their failure to keep their promise and pledged again to fulfil it. …

During the negotiations that led to the historic Paris Agreement at the 21st UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in 2015, the climate vulnerable countries argued for and succeeded in getting the global goal on mitigation of staying below two degrees Celsius—and if possible, below 1.5 degrees Celsius. This was indeed a remarkable achievement for the vulnerable countries at that time. …