Tag: Dr. Saleemul Huq’s article
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Bangladesh needs to invest in climate diplomacy
As Bangladesh aims to graduate out of Least Developed Country (LDC) status over the next few years and become more intimately involved in various international activities and issues, we need to make tackling climate change a national and diplomatic priority as well. This means that every new Bangladeshi diplomat should have a basic understanding of…
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Is a global goal on adaptation possible?
At the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change made at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2015, all the countries of the world agreed on a global goal on mitigation as well as setting a global goal on adaptation. The global goal on mitigation…
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OPINION: If ‘totemic’ climate finance pledge is missed, developing nations should skip COP26
The UK official running the UN summit says rich nations must fulfill an unmet promise to provide $100 billion a year if they are to retain their credibility in negotiations Back in 2009, at the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, rich countries first set a goal of channelling $100 billion in public and private…
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Covid-19 and climate change: World leaders must tackle both
In past weeks, there have been a number of significant events which may seem unconnected but are actually deeply connected in terms of whether the world is able to successfully come out of the current Covid-19 pandemic and also deal with the looming catastrophe of climate change. The first event was Cyclone Yaas, which hit…
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Can the G7 leaders rise to the occasion?
The leaders of the G7 countries—consisting of the US, UK, Canada, Japan, Italy, France and Germany—will be holding their annual meeting in the UK in the second week of June and have a number of major issues on their agenda, including how to roll out global vaccination against the coronavirus and how to tackle climate…
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Tackling three global emergencies at once
The world is having to tackle three major emergencies at the same time. The first is obviously the Covid-19 pandemic that is still raging around the world, the second is climate change, which is also getting much worse every year, and finally, there is biodiversity loss, which will mean the loss of up to a…
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Now is the time to focus on loss and damage from climate change
The year 2020 will be remembered as not just the year of the pandemic, but also for the experienced human-induced climate change impacts, making loss and damage from those impacts a reality. What this means is that every climate-related hazard such as heatwaves, droughts, floods and cyclones are no longer entirely natural events, but have…
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Beyond resilience, we need to prosper in the face of climate change
Last week, I wrote in this daily about the need for Bangladesh to take a “whole of society” approach to international diplomacy on tackling climate change globally, rather than depending on the annual Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which meets only once a year for two…
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Bangladesh’s climate diplomacy needs to take a whole-of-society approach
One can argue that the issue of tackling climate change in Bangladesh has already achieved a whole-of-government approach, and is also rapidly moving towards a whole-of-society approach. However, our international diplomacy on tackling climate change also needs to develop both approaches. What do these two terms mean, and how are they being rolled out? The…
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OPINION: We must discuss the Paris Agreement every day – not just once a year at COP
As the pandemic again threatens the annual UN climate summit, known as the COP, it’s time to push on with a fresh approach that uses all opportunities for climate action The British government, as the host of the COP26 U.N. climate conference that was originally planned for November 2020, decided to postpone it a year…
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The G7 countries need to step up on climate finance
One of the positive outcomes of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change back in 2015 was a pledge from the rich countries to provide USD 100 billion a year, starting from 2020, to help the poorer countries tackle climate change through both mitigation and adaptation actions. However, the year 2020 has come and gone, but…
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Are the climate change Conference of Parties still fit for purpose?
Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), all governments of the nearly 200 countries that have ratified the treaty meet twice a year to review progress and make decisions about next steps. These meetings are held at the level of officials only, in May or June every year in Bonn, Germany where…