Category: Dr Saleemul Huq Media
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It’s worse than we thought
The United Nation’s scientific body on climate change, namely the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has just released a special report which is a scientific as well as political report of great significance and could be a game-changer in galvanising enhanced action to tackle climate change. The report has a controversial history. The consensus…
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Achieving complete renewable energy reliance -Vulnerable countries leading the way again
Ten years ago, under the leadership of then President Nasheed of the Maldives, the leaders of the most vulnerable developing countries came together to form the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF). The countries in the CVF, which included Bangladesh as a founding member, were from Asia, Africa and Latin America and belonged to different negotiating groups…
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How long-term planning can work
Bangladesh has a strong tradition of medium term planning through the periodic Five Year Plans, of which we are now in the 7th Plan. At the same time, the country has a large number of professional planners both within the Planning Commission as well as embedded within the Planning Department of every ministry who help…
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It’s time to make polluters pay for climate damages
Comment: As science linking storms like Hurricane Florence and Super Typhoon Mangkhut to climate change strengthens, so does the case for compensating victims In the last few days as Hurricane Florence battered the east coast of the United States of America and Super Typhoon Mangkhut hit Philippines and China an important scientific breakthrough took place. Previously,…
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Thinking outside the box
The issue of loss and damage from climate change has been a politically sensitive topic in the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as developed countries see it as opening the way for claiming compensation from them based on their liability. However, there have been several breakthroughs on the issue…
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Tackling poverty and climate change at the same time
Over the coming decades, at the global level as well as in Bangladesh we will be faced with two major challenges: tackling poverty and climate change. Although at first glance the two issues may not seem to be linked, I will argue that we cannot tackle either without also tackling the other at the same…
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We have crossed the tipping point on climate change
Until now, scientists working on climate change have been talking about the scenarios, forecasts and even predictions of adverse impacts due to human induced climate change that would occur in the future if we failed to prevent it from happening. However, in the last twelve months or so the same scientists have now been saying…
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A note on the environmental aspects of Rohingya camps
It has been nearly a year since the latest influx of the Rohingya people after they were forcibly driven out of Myanmar and into Bangladesh. Since last August, over 700,000 refugees, mostly women and children, have been housed, fed, clothed and provided with medical attention by a combination of Bangladesh’s military and civilian authorities and…
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Limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees
In the run-up to the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in its 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) in December 2015, one of the most politically contentious issues was whether the limit of the long-term global temperature rise should be kept at 2 degrees centigrade or changed to 1.5 degrees.…
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What we can learn from the Green Climate Fund crisis
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was created under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to channel up to USD 100 billion a year from 2020 onwards from the developed countries to the developing countries to help them tackle climate change through both mitigation and adaptation projects. The fund started four years ago…
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Answering the Talanoa Dialogue questions
At the 23rd Conference of Parties (COP23) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held last December under the presidency of the prime minister of Fiji, a new feature called the Talanoa Dialogue was introduced. Talanoa Dialogue is a traditional form of decision-making in the Pacific which is very different from the…