Tag: Dr. Saleemul Huq’s article
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Time to ramp up investment in adaptation to climate change
2019 is proving to be a game-changing year with regard to the issue of global climate change in a number of ways. First, we are seeing the unequivocal attribution of incidents starting from hurricanes, wildfires, floods—such as in the mid-Western states in the US—to human-induced climate change repercussions. From now onwards, it is fairly safe…
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Internal climate migration a challenge to creating climate resilient Bangladesh
“These people mostly take shelter in Dhaka, which is currently in no position to absorb 10 million more people” The government’s vision of turning Bangladesh into a climate resilient country by 2030 would be hard to achieve as climate migrants would affect the procedure, said environmental experts at a press briefing yesterday. ActionAid and ICCCAD…
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Graduating out of LDC status – What Bangladesh should keep in mind
The Least Developed Countries (LDC) group constitutes 47 countries, mostly in Africa and some in Asia (including Bangladesh), officially recognised by the United Nations (UN). Countries belonging to the group are entitled to duty-free access to developed country markets for their goods and are recognised under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)…
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Bangladesh shines at Geneva meeting
Last week the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) meeting was held in Geneva, Switzerland with more than 4,000 delegates from all over the world and many different stakeholders including government, UN agencies, private sector, civil society, women’s groups, indigenous peoples’ groups, youth groups, groups related to people with disabilities, and many others.…
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How Least Developed Countries can become leaders in tackling climate change
The group of Least Developed Countries (LDC) has been negotiating under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for many years and has continuously taken leadership roles at key points. For example, the push for and successful inclusion (against great odds) of the long-term global temperature goal of 1.5 degrees Centigrade in the…
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Making polluters pay for loss and damage
The recent devastation in Mozambique due to two successive hurricanes (Aida and Kenneth) of unprecedented severity for southern Africa, are a clear indicator that we are now living in a climate changed world. And that the huge loss and damage sustained by the people of Mozambique is due to human-induced climate change and not just…
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How the Green Climate Fund can be more effective
It has now been well over five years since the Green Climate Fund (GCF) was set up with its headquarters in Songdo, Korea to support both mitigation and adaptation projects and programmes in developing countries. It received an initial contribution of around USD 10 billion and is now undergoing a review of its performance in…
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Children are at risk due to climate change, but they are also sources of solutions
A recent report from Unicef mentions that 19 million (or one in three) children in Bangladesh are at risk from the effects of climate change. This is indeed an alarming potential risk for the country. However, all such reports about future adverse impacts of future climate change have an unwritten codicil which says “if we…
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Time to enhance global support to the most vulnerable communities
The massive cyclone Idai that devastated Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe last week has destroyed 90 percent of Beira, the second biggest city in Mozambique. This was a cyclone of unprecedented severity for that part of Africa and has been rightly attributed to human-induced climate change by the scientific community. Hence, we are now unequivocally living…
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A talking point for COP25 -A realistic approach needed to fund loss and damage from climate change
The topic of loss and damage from human-induced climate change has been a highly politically sensitive issue in international negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for many years with vulnerable developing countries, including Bangladesh, arguing in its favour and the rich countries arguing against it. In recent years, there have…
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Why we should set our sights on climate diplomacy
Over the last two decades, the issue of global climate change has shifted from being primarily an environmental issue to a global security and diplomatic issue as well. Hence many countries have shifted responsibility from the ministry of environment to the foreign ministry as the focal ministry to handle the issue. This is also a…
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Climate change, a global security threat -Early action is needed to avoid worst case scenario
In the last week of January, the United Nations Security Council in New York held a special session on climate change as a global security threat. It was not the first time such a session had been held but it was by far a much more alarmist session as we now acknowledge that human-induced climate…