Tag: Dr. Saleemul Huq’s article
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What lies ahead for climate change
As we enter the new year of 2020, we are in fact making a very significant transition when it comes to the issue of climate change. The first transition is a semantic one, but nevertheless a very significant one, namely that in 2019 we acknowledged that the climate change problem has become the climate change…
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CLIMATE CHANGE Highlights from 2019 and the path ahead
As this is my last column for 2019, I am going to share some of its highlights and also my verdict on the year as well as some reflections on the next year and the next decade. In terms of the climate change issue, there were a number of important turning points in 2019. The…
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COP25: Long but barely fruitful
The 25th Conference of Parties (COP25) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) started on December 2 and was due to finish after about two weeks, on December 13 (Friday). However, it went into overtime for non-stop negotiations through Friday night and Saturday day and night, to finally finish two days late…
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The political dimension of COP25
The 25th Conference of Parties (COP25) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) being held in Madrid, Spain is now half way through with the technical level negotiations having been completed and the ministers now arriving in to lock the final political agreements. There are two major politically sensitive issues which will…
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COP25 off to a good start
The 25th annual Conference of the Parties (COP25) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) opened in Madrid, Spain on Monday with a high-level event of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF). There, in the presence of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the current chair of the CVF, President Hilda Heine of the Marshall…
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GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE NEGOTIATIONSRich countries must pay for climate loss and damage
The global negotiations on how to tackle climate change take place in December at the annual Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is hosted in a different continent each year. This year it was the turn of South America, and COP25 was supposed to have been…
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Climate emergency, planetary emergency and our survival
The Bangladesh parliament has declared a planetary emergency in a resolution adopted a few days ago. This is indeed a major initiative and the parliamentarians should be applauded for it. Although other countries’ parliaments—such as the United Kingdom—had declared climate emergency, Bangladesh is the first country to declare a planetary emergency. The difference is that…
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How can insurance play a role in tackling climate change?
The 15th annual global microinsurance conference was held last week in Bangladesh for the first time with the theme of “Coping with climate risk”. It was inaugurated by the prime minister who felt that the insurance industry could play a key role in not only managing recovery from natural disasters, but also in tackling climate…
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Developing more towns – Key to climate resilience
Bangladesh is facing two global megatrends with significant national repercussions. The first is the rapidly urbanising world we live in, where half the global population is already living in cities and towns and Bangladesh will soon cross that threshold as well. The government of Bangladesh under the direction of the prime minister has taken up…
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We need to declare a planetary emergency
Humanity has made a “tragic, desperate mess” of the planet, said Sir David Attenborough, the 93-year-old naturalist and documentary filmmaker on announcing his new series of documentaries called “Seven Worlds, One Planet” due to be broadcast on the BBC. He has spent a lifetime making iconic documentaries on the natural wonders of both the earth…
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Real development needs nature-based solutions
We are all immensely proud of the economic development being achieved by Bangladesh and looking forward to our graduation from Least Developed Country (LDC) status to middle income country status within the next few years. However, as we move our development pathway forward we are facing a very significant fork in the road ahead and…
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The challenge from Greta Thunberg on tackling climate change
Last week in New York, the United Nations Secretary General (UNSG) Antonia Guitteres held a Global Action Summit where he invited world leaders from selected countries only to come with “plans not speeches” to raise the level of ambition to tackle climate change. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was amongst those invited but US President…