Category: Daily Star Article
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We must urgently prioritise adaptation to address the climate emergency
The recently-published report of Working Group-I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a renewed wakeup call on the urgency of taking action at the global level to address climate change. It has, with more accuracy and confidence, confirmed that at least one degree Celsius of temperature rise compared to pre-industrial level can…
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Latest IPCC climate report shows time is running out to save the planet
The science of climate change is assessed every six or so years under the aegis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was set up several decades ago by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO)—and it consists of the governments of all UN member states. The IPCC…
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The era of loss and damage from climate change is upon usWe must act immediately if we are to avert its worst impacts
Over the last week of July 2021, we all watched on our TV screens as the heat dome and wildfires in north-western US and Canada took many lives and destroyed the town of Lytton in Canada. Then, the devastating floods in Germany and Belgium cost several hundred lives, followed by more loss of lives from…
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Delivery of climate finance will be the key to COP26
The upcoming 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is to be held in Glasgow, Scotland in November, with the United Kingdom as the host. The incoming COP26 President designate Alok Sharma has rightly said that the delivery of the “totemic 100 billion US Dollar” in climate…
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Vulnerable countries take the lead in tackling climate change
Last week, Bangladesh hosted the climate finance summit called by the nearly 50 vulnerable developing countries that are part of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), which is chaired by Bangladesh for the current two-year term. The summit was moderated by the former President of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, who is the CVF Ambassador for Ambition,…
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Bangladesh needs to invest in climate diplomacy
As Bangladesh aims to graduate out of Least Developed Country (LDC) status over the next few years and become more intimately involved in various international activities and issues, we need to make tackling climate change a national and diplomatic priority as well. This means that every new Bangladeshi diplomat should have a basic understanding of…
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Building back a greener Bangladesh
The title of this article has been borrowed from an on-line discussion organised by the Policy Research Institute on June 20, 2021. I was a panelist at the event, which some current and former World Bank officials had participated in, together with most of the famous environmental experts of Bangladesh. With its physical and…
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Is a global goal on adaptation possible?
At the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change made at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2015, all the countries of the world agreed on a global goal on mitigation as well as setting a global goal on adaptation. The global goal on mitigation…
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From vulnerability to resilience to prosperity
Transforming the narrative of tackling climate change
The development gains and hard-earned productivity of Bangladesh are at risk of being inverted if the 1.5 degree Celsius limit of the Paris Agreement is breached. To that end, it remains imperative to equip vulnerable communities, key sectors and the government with vital instruments to bring about resilience and stability for all. At the end…
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Covid-19 and climate change: World leaders must tackle both
In past weeks, there have been a number of significant events which may seem unconnected but are actually deeply connected in terms of whether the world is able to successfully come out of the current Covid-19 pandemic and also deal with the looming catastrophe of climate change. The first event was Cyclone Yaas, which hit…
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Can the G7 leaders rise to the occasion?
The leaders of the G7 countries—consisting of the US, UK, Canada, Japan, Italy, France and Germany—will be holding their annual meeting in the UK in the second week of June and have a number of major issues on their agenda, including how to roll out global vaccination against the coronavirus and how to tackle climate…
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Tackling three global emergencies at once
The world is having to tackle three major emergencies at the same time. The first is obviously the Covid-19 pandemic that is still raging around the world, the second is climate change, which is also getting much worse every year, and finally, there is biodiversity loss, which will mean the loss of up to a…