October 14, 2020
Adaptation finance at the conflux of climate crisis, Covid-19 and debt distress
Covid-19 has hit all countries of the world, both rich and poor, but the low income countries (LICs) are hit hardest, and half of them are at high risk of or are already in debt distress.
July 23, 2020
Crafting image in an age of electronic globalisation
Recently, quite a number of reports have been published in both national and foreign media outlets about how two healthcare providers in Bangladesh issued fake Covid-19 certificates. Obviously, the negative coverage has tarnished the image of our nation abroad.
May 6, 2020
Covid-19 challenges the conventional security paradigm
Coronavirus is razing the world to the ground, continuing to claim human lives—the latest count exceeds well over 200,000, with the number of infected running over three million.
December 26, 2019
An effective platform for branding Bangladesh
The 25th Conference of Parties (COP25) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ended just days ago.
December 19, 2019
COP25: Another round of active inaction
The UN’s longest-ever climate negotiations, continuing non-stop for almost two extra days, drew to a close on December 15 with not much to celebrate. Nations on both sides—developed and developing—held hardline positions resulting in utter disappointment, so expressed grudgingly by the UN Secretary General himself. Countries failed to agree on many of the sought-after outcomes, including rules to set up a global carbon market, steps to mobilise dedicated funding for loss and damage (L&D) and mobilisation of long term finance (LTF) for the most vulnerable.
September 23, 2019
Building capacity to implement the Paris Agreement
The Asia-Pacific Climate Week was held at the UN Conference Centre, Bangkok from September 2 to 6, 2019. The objective was to have a regional dialogue on how to rachet up ambition in mitigation and speed up adaptation actions.
April 25, 2019
Climate Change And Security: What the discourse is all about
We, the global community, already live in a climate-changed world, evidenced by the successive reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
February 19, 2019
Without proper urban facilities, quality life is unachievable
The word “city” comes from the Latin root “civis/civitas”, meaning citizen/citizenship. The expressions “civil/civic/civilisation” owe their pedigree to this Latin origin. Eventually, it came to correspond with the French “urbs”, meaning city in a more physical sense.
November 2, 2018
Growth, green growth and development
The dictionary meaning of “growth” is “getting bigger”, in size or volume, whereas “development” is improvement in the quality of a system. It can be an individual, a community, or a nation.
July 22, 2017
The Gordian Knot of Dhaka city governance
We have managed to turn a serene, rustic, romantic Dhaka into a dishevelled, messy concrete slum just within a century.