As far as climate change is concerned, the Asia Pacific is highly significant. In this region, we have China, Japan and India emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases, while low-lying areas are facing the threats brought on by the waters. Just recently, China and India suffered major flooding, which has caused much devastation. In South Korea – where I’ve been …
Scale up climate change adaptation as soon as possible
The recent floods in Bandarban and Chattogram have left behind a trail of deaths, while waterlogging put countless lives in misery. To make matters worse, this was just one of the many episodes caused by unusually heavy rainfall, and we must expect more of such incidents as human-induced climate change continues. While Bangladesh has been doing quite well in adapting …
What our new climate envoy can do for Bangladesh
Last month the PM Sheikh Hasina appointed Saber Hossain Chowdhury, member of parliament, as her climate envoy. This is excellent news as many countries have climate envoys and Bangladesh could really use one too. Climate change has become a part of daily life and climate-relevant international meetings are being held around the world every week. This is where the climate …
Enter ‘global boiling’
July was the hottest month ever recorded on our planet. It marks a clear turning point from the previous era of talking about global warming as something that will happen in the future to recognising that it is happening already. This is evident all over the globe; from heat waves in North America and southern Europe, to floods in China …
Key takeaways from the Paris summit on climate finance
Recently, I had the privilege of being invited to the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, hosted by President Emmanuel Macron of France, alongside over 20 heads of government. Bangladesh was represented by Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen and Climate Envoy Saber Hossain Chowdhury. I was invited to speak at three events during the summit. The first was an …
The who’s and how’s of allocating loss and damage funds
During the negotiations on funding for loss and damage in COP27 in Egypt last November, representatives of developed countries had a lot of reservations about such a proposal. My answer to them was that, while their questions were quite legitimate, they would only get answers after we received a political commitment from their leaders to establish the funding mechanism in …
Bangladesh takes another step in leading global climate adaptation
On December 11, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina formally launched the new Global Hub on Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) in Dhaka along with the foreign minister and environment minister, and Ban Ki-Moon, head of the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA). The new Global Hub on LLA will be located in the Dhaka office of the GCA, which is located in the …
What Bangladesh must do now as a global climate leader
The recent agreement by all countries to establish a new fund for loss and damage from human-induced climate change at COP27 was a simple recognition of an unfortunate reality that has existed for a long time. The reality is that the impacts that are now scientifically attributable to global temperature rise are now happening every day around the world, and …
The story behind the loss and damage fund at COP27
COP27 ended a day overtime on November 20 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt with the historic achievement of a new fund for addressing loss and damage in vulnerable developing countries. Today, I want to tell the story of how this was achieved. The demand for rich countries to shoulder their responsibility for historic pollution – which has raised the global temperature …
Negotiations going strong at COP27
As we near the end of the two weeks of intense negotiations at the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference (Conference of Parties – COP27) here in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, things are certainly heating up. The biggest and newest issue is that of loss and damage finance, which was finally accepted as an official agenda item in a COP …
