POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE | The Daily Star

  • How long-term planning can work

    Bangladesh has a strong tradition of medium term planning through the periodic Five Year Plans, of which we are now in the 7th Plan. At the same time, the country has a large number of professional planners both within the Planning Commission as well as embedded within the Planning Department of every ministry who help develop the sectoral plans for each ministry.

  • Thinking outside the box

    The issue of loss and damage from climate change has been a politically sensitive topic in the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as developed countries see it as opening the way for claiming compensation from them based on their liability.

  • Tackling poverty and climate change at the same time

    Over the coming decades, at the global level as well as in Bangladesh we will be faced with two major challenges: tackling poverty and climate change. Although at first glance the two issues may not seem to be linked, I will argue that we cannot tackle either without also tackling the other at the same time. This is equally true for both the global and the national level, especially for poor countries like Bangladesh.

  • We have crossed the tipping point on climate change

    Until now, scientists working on climate change have been talking about the scenarios, forecasts and even predictions of adverse impacts due to human induced climate change that would occur in the future if we failed to prevent it from happening.

  • Tackling climate change in the Barind Tract

    In almost every global assessment of which countries are most vulnerable to climate change impacts, Bangladesh comes out as either first or at least in the top five, depending on the criteria used in the assessment.

  • A note on the environmental aspects of Rohingya camps

    It has been nearly a year since the latest influx of the Rohingya people after they were forcibly driven out of Myanmar and into Bangladesh. Since last August, over 700,000 refugees, mostly women and children, have been housed, fed, clothed and provided with medical attention by a combination of Bangladesh's military and civilian authorities and NGOs as well as the UN and other international agencies, of whom there are over a hundred working day and night in the Rohingya camps.

  • Limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees

    In the run-up to the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in its 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) in December 2015, one of the most politically contentious issues was whether the limit of the long-term global temperature rise should be kept at 2 degrees centigrade or changed to 1.5 degrees.

  • What we can learn from the Green Climate Fund crisis

    The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was created under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to channel up to USD 100 billion a year from 2020 onwards from the developed countries to the developing countries to help them tackle climate change through both mitigation and adaptation projects.

  • Answering the Talanoa Dialogue questions

    At the 23rd Conference of Parties (COP23) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held last December under the presidency of the prime minister of Fiji, a new feature called the Talanoa Dialogue was introduced.

  • Is 100 percent renewable energy feasible?

    Midway through the two-week-long 22nd Conference of Parties (COP22) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in November 2016 in Marrakech, Morocco, the presidential election results in the USA were announced. The result, Trump winning the election, was like a bombshell in the COP.

  • A year after Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement

    A year has passed since President Trump announced that the United States would formally withdraw from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. What has happened since has been a mixture of good and bad—but on the whole, more good than bad.

  • Designing adaptation projects for the Green Climate Fund

    The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was set up under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to channel much of the USD 100 billion a year starting from 2020 onwards that the developed countries have promised to provide to developing countries to tackle climate change through both mitigation and adaptation projects and activities.

  • Green Climate Fund: Still a work in progress

    The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was created under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to channel USD 100 billion a year starting from 2020 onwards, which the developed countries have pledged to provide to developing countries to tackle climate change through both mitigation as well as adaptation activities. The Secretariat of the GCF is located in Korea and the GCF Board has equal representation from developed and developing countries.

  • Fixing the rules for climate change action from Fiji to Poland

    The Paris Agreement on Climate Change adopted at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP 21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in December 2015 is the road map for all countries to tackle climate change by 2030. However, the rule book for the countries to follow will have to be agreed at COP 24, to be held in Katowice, Poland in December this year.

  • The battle over terminology: Adaptation vs resilience

    In the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), every word used can be contested between countries (sometimes they even argue for hours about a coma!). Hence every term has to be accepted by consensus by all the countries for it to be adopted in any UNFCCC decision.

  • Time to make polluters pay for climate change

    At the 19th Conference of Parties (COP19) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Warsaw, Poland in 2013, there was a breakthrough agreement to set up the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) on Loss and Damage with its Executive Committee having equal representation from developed and developing countries.

  • Building national capacity to tackle climate change

    UNDER Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), all countries are supposed to ensure awareness, education and capacity building to tackle climate change with the developed countries

  • The 'Talanoa Dialogue' on Climate Change

    The 196 countries that are signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meet each year around December at the annual Conference of Parties (COP) to review progress on implementing the decisions. The COP moves to a different continent each year as each continent hosts it in turn.

  • Updating Bangladesh's climate change strategy and action plan

    In 2009 Bangladesh developed and released the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP) which was the first of its kind at that time. It was a remarkable document for a number of reasons.

  • Building climate resilient, migrant-friendly cities

    A recent report from the World Bank has looked at the potential number of people who will be displaced and become climate migrants due to the adverse impacts of climate change around the world by 2050. The report estimated the number to be around 140 million across Asia and Africa, with 40 million in South Asia.

  • Risks and opportunities of LDC graduation

    The prime minister, the government and the people of Bangladesh can be justly proud that the country will now be able to graduate out of the Least Developed Country (LDC) status within the next few years.

  • Tapping the potential of our youth

    Many oil-rich countries like Norway, United Arab Emirates and Brunei have put billions of US dollars into Sovereign Wealth Funds through which they invest in interest-bearing assets around the world, either enhancing the amount in the fund, or for subsidising costs of selected services for their own citizens.

  • Tackling the environmental challenges in Cox's Bazar

    Having just returned from a scoping mission to Cox's Bazar to see the environmental situation both inside and outside the Rohingya camps, I am going

  • How financing to tackle climate change can be mobilised

    At the recently concluded two-day international conference on climate finance in Dhaka, about a hundred national and 50 international experts, government officials, researchers and private sector representatives shared their experiences and knowledge about raising and spending money to tackle climate change around the world.

  • Looking beyond the horizon

    Bangladesh has a long tradition of preparing national development plans by the General Economics Division (GED) of the Planning Commission primarily through the adoption of five-year plans of which we are currently in the 7th Five Year Plan (7FYP) which runs till 2020.

  • Enhancing knowledge for research-backed policymaking

    Bangladesh plans to graduate out of the Least Developed Country (LDC) status soon. One of major element that is part and parcel of this graduation will be the generation and use of evidence and knowledge.

  • 2018 may be the tipping point for tackling climate change

    As we move into the new year it is perhaps appropriate to reflect on the significant actions and developments that occurred in 2017 in the arena of climate change, both globally and nationally, and do some crystal-ball-gazing into the future.

  • Turning the climate change problem into opportunity

    As this month of December is both the end of the calendar year as well as the month when we commemorate the 47th year of Bangladesh's existence as an independent country, I am going to write this column with a look into the future over where Bangladesh can go over next few decades.

  • Two years of the Paris Agreement

    On December 12, 2015 at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris, France, under the leadership of the then President Hollande, the historic Paris Agreement on climate change was adopted. It was a historic agreement for a number of important reasons.

  • Easing the pressure on Dhaka

    The second Annual National Conference on Urban Resilience was just held in Dhaka and in three days it brought together several hundred people from different sectors including the central government, local government, mayors and town planners, as well as researchers, academics, NGOs and private sector actors to discuss the future pathways to build urban resilience in Bangladesh.

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