The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) was set up with its headquarters in the Netherlands a couple of years ago, and has already developed into a major platform focusing on supporting countries to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change. It has already set up regional centres in China and Africa, and is about to launch the regional centre …

One of the positive outcomes of the COP26 held in Glasgow, Scotland in November 2021 was a universal acknowledgement of the failure of developed countries to deliver climate finance to developing countries, and even of developing countries themselves to actually deliver to the most vulnerable communities within their own territories. While it is good that countries acknowledged their failure and …

On the last official day of the 26th UN climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland last year, over 150 countries representing more than five billion people put forward a proposal for the creation of the Glasgow Facility on Financing Loss and Damage to combat human-induced climate change as part of the final Glasgow Climate Pact. However, the text was later …

We are living in the era of impacts by human-induced climate change, which requires actions by everyone on the planet every single day if we are going to reach the goals set to tackle the climate crisis by 2030. We have no time to lose; every single day counts. This means that we can no longer leave things to our …

The year 2030 is the target year for the world to achieve all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations. In addition to the SDGs, 2030 is also the year by which all countries party to the Paris Agreement on climate change must keep the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius, as well as achieve the …

The year 2021 has been significant in climate change discussions, in a decade that is already quite important in terms of tackling the climate crisis. This was the year when the world finally acknowledged that human-induced climate change due to the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from burning fossil fuels for over a century had already raised the global mean …

As someone who has attended every single climate change conference under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—the Conference of Parties (COP)—one thing I have learnt is that waiting until a COP is held to prepare to get something out of it simply does not work. If a country or a group of countries—or anyone else for that …

The current secretary-general of the United Nations, Antonio Guiterres, has already established himself as a champion for actions to tackle climate change to all countries and actors, and has recently been quite outspoken in his criticism of the poor outcomes of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), held in Glasgow last month. While there was no doubt that some incremental …

Going into COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland in November, it was already clear that the most vulnerable developing countries wanted the topic of loss and damage from human-induced climate change to get significant attention in the COP process, as well as outside the COP process. Now, after COP26 is over, we can discuss what was achieved, as well as what was …

Ever since COP26 ended, we have been bombarded with analyses on how good or bad it was. The COP26 Presidency claimed it was a great success, while the vulnerable developing countries left Glasgow in great dismay over the overturning of their demand for a “Glasgow facility” on “financing loss and damage”. They only got a promise to hold a “dialogue” …