Category: Daily Star Article
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Now is the time to focus on loss and damage from climate change
The year 2020 will be remembered as not just the year of the pandemic, but also for the experienced human-induced climate change impacts, making loss and damage from those impacts a reality. What this means is that every climate-related hazard such as heatwaves, droughts, floods and cyclones are no longer entirely natural events, but have…
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Beyond resilience, we need to prosper in the face of climate change
Last week, I wrote in this daily about the need for Bangladesh to take a “whole of society” approach to international diplomacy on tackling climate change globally, rather than depending on the annual Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which meets only once a year for two…
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Bangladesh’s climate diplomacy needs to take a whole-of-society approach
One can argue that the issue of tackling climate change in Bangladesh has already achieved a whole-of-government approach, and is also rapidly moving towards a whole-of-society approach. However, our international diplomacy on tackling climate change also needs to develop both approaches. What do these two terms mean, and how are they being rolled out? The…
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The G7 countries need to step up on climate finance
One of the positive outcomes of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change back in 2015 was a pledge from the rich countries to provide USD 100 billion a year, starting from 2020, to help the poorer countries tackle climate change through both mitigation and adaptation actions. However, the year 2020 has come and gone, but…
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Are the climate change Conference of Parties still fit for purpose?
Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), all governments of the nearly 200 countries that have ratified the treaty meet twice a year to review progress and make decisions about next steps. These meetings are held at the level of officials only, in May or June every year in Bonn, Germany where…
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On President Biden’s Climate Summit and John Kerry’s visit to Dhaka
US President Biden’s first act upon being sworn in as President on January 20, 2021, was to officially notify the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that he was withdrawing former President Trump’s withdrawal letter from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and that the United States was rejoining the Paris Agreement. He…
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Finance is vital for the success of COP26
The United Kingdom—as the incoming President of the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to be held in Glasgow, Scotland in November—held a ministerial meeting on March 31 to discuss the issue of raising adequate funds for enabling developing countries to tackle climate change. The COP26…
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Science and solidarity are key for tackling climate change
As we are now well into the second decade of this century, it is widely acknowledged that this coming decade is our last opportunity to keep the increasing rate of the global atmospheric temperature below 1.5 degrees Celsius and prevent the catastrophic impacts of human-induced climate change from occurring around the world. This is a…
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Invest in knowledge generation and capacity-building to tackle climate change
Bangladesh is planning to adapt to the adverse impacts of human-induced climate change and aiming to become a resilient country by 2030, as both the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change goals are supposed to be achieved by that year. At the same time, we are looking forward to graduating…
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How do we tap into the global investment market?
Are Green Bonds the answer?As the Padma Bridge nears completion, the south western region of Bangladesh is poised for greater development as the bridge will connect it to Dhaka. The south western region of Bangladesh also contains the Sundarbans mangrove forest, which is the biggest mangrove forest in the world and is a World Heritage Site. Hence, our responsibility…
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Building resilient food systems
The Covid-19 crisis has demonstrated a number of ways in which the world, as currently functioning, is not fit for purpose and is certainly not at all as resilient as we would like it to be. One of the vulnerabilities that have been exposed is food production, processing, trade and consumption in practically every country.…