“The time to take action to save the planet is not tomorrow, but today.” — Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as Chair of CVF at CVF leaders’ event at the UNGA, New York on October 7, 2024. “I believe our Presidency’s most important legacy will be to shift the narrative from climate vulnerability to resilience and prosperity. In Bangladesh, we are …

I had an opportunity to address a meeting of Bangladeshi parliamentarians, under the leadership of Speaker of the House Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, organised by the UNDP, on the outcome of COP27 and the role of parliamentarians going forward. Let me share some of my remarks to the parliamentarians and also some of the outcomes of the event. The main …

Among the three strategies for addressing climate change – mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage (L&D) – the latter two continue to suffer from interpretational ambiguities. Adaptation does not have an agreed definition under the climate regime. Loss and damage is not yet considered as a third strategy by developed countries. But developing countries don’t agree. Under the Paris Agreement, …

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 …

After the publication of the third assessment report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001, the world came to realize that adverse impacts of human- induced climate change would become inevitable and unavoidable and hence all countries had to prepare for those adverse impacts through adaptation. A corollary of that finding was that while all countries, both …

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 to end later this year, …

Over the last few days here in Glasgow, Scotland, over a hundred world leaders have arrived for the leaders’ summit at the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to give speeches, hold meetings with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and also have some bilateral meetings among themselves. They are not here …

Last week, a number of events were held around the world to promote actions to tackle climate change and get everyone ready ahead of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), to be held in Glasgow, Scotland in November this year. The week started off with a high-level meeting at the United Nations in New York, co-hosted …

This week, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres held a high-level meeting on climate change in New York, where Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was one of the leaders invited to add momentum to the actions needed to tackle climate change before the upcoming climate conference, COP26, hosted by the United Kingdom and scheduled to be held in Glasgow in November …