POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE | The Daily Star

  • Climate change ambitions at the end of 2020: Good news and bad

    One of the major outcomes of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change—agreed by all countries at the end of the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Paris, France in December 2015—was that every country would prepare and submit their respective plans to take action to tackle climate change every five years, with the expectation that the level of ambition would be enhanced at each five-year cycle.

  • A crucial decade for tackling climate change

    As we welcome the new year of 2021, we also enter a new decade that will culminate with 2030, a year that marks an end point for some very important goals and milestones for the world.

  • Can Bangladesh become a knowledge economy?

    As we say goodbye to the terrible year of 2020 and enter not just a new year in 2021 but a new decade to 2030, it is time to look ahead with some sense of optimism for our country over the coming decade.

  • Entering the Anthropocene era in a befitting manner

    The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been a pioneer in terms of developing the Human Development Index (HDI), which is a more balanced way of measuring human development that goes beyond traditional, simple economic indicators of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

  • Where is the $100 billion to tackle climate change?

    On December 12, 2020, it was the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the occasion was marked by a Climate Ambition Summit hosted by Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, who serves as the presidency of COP26 taking place in Glasgow, Scotland in November 2021.

  • What can we expect from the new US climate czar?

    President-Elect Joe Biden of the United States of America recently announced his national security and foreign policy team including a significant new position of a “climate envoy” who would sit on the National Security Council, choosing former Senator John Kerry for that position.

  • Why Bangladesh should submit its Nationally Determined Contribution by December 31

    At the time of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change which was approved by all countries in 2015, every country submitted it’s intended Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) in which they made pledges and commitments for mitigation by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

  • America returns to the Paris Agreement on climate change

    The election of Joe Biden as the next president of the United States of America has brought a great sigh of relief to everyone around the world who wants to see global action to tackle the threat of climate change.

  • Postponing COP26 cannot postpone climate action

    The 26th annual Conference of Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was supposed to have been held this week in Glasgow, Scotland under the chairmanship of the government of the United Kingdom.

  • Climate Vulnerable Forum can change the paradigm on dealing with climate change

    The Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), consisting of nearly 50 of the most climate vulnerable developing countries, which was set up a decade ago on the basis of their common vulnerability to climate change, has now evolved into a more robust group of countries who are no longer only emphasising their vulnerability but rather moving towards resilience.

  • Taking a ‘whole of society’ approach to tackling climate change

    The scale of the global climate change emergency that is emerging in 2020 has already made it clear that nothing short of a “whole of society” approach is needed if we are going to be able to tackle it effectively over the coming decade, which is the crucial time window we have left.

  • We must agree on a global goal for adaptation to climate change

    The historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change, agreed at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris, France in 2015, was a major outcome that all vulnerable developing countries, including Bangladesh, strongly fought for.

  • Developing multiple strategies as part of the National Adaptation Plan for Bangladesh

    In last week’s column, I proposed that the Bangladesh National Adaptation Plan (NAP) that is now being developed should be innovative and not just a business-as-usual (BAU) report that will gather dust on a shelf, as many such plans have done in the past.

  • We need to be innovative when developing Bangladesh’s National Adaptation Plan

    Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), all countries are supposed to develop their respective National Adaptation Plan (NAP) according to a prescribed format provided by international experts.

  • Bangladeshi youth can carve a new path for the Global Youth Adaptation Network

    Last week, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon jointly launched the new South Asian Regional office of the Global Centre on Adaptation (GCA).

  • Bangladesh takes another step towards tackling global climate change

    During July last year, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina hosted the Global Commission on Adaptation meeting in Dhaka attended by the co-chairs of the Commission, former Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon and Kristalina Georgiva, head of the International Monetary Fund.

  • We need a paradigm shift to deal with loss and damage from climate change

    In the international negotiations on climate change impacts under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the issue of loss and damage has always been a politically sensitive topic—it brings up issues of liability and compensation, which many developed countries regard as taboo topics.

  • Four lessons from Covid-19 pandemic for tackling climate change

    The global Covid-19 pandemic is now just over half a year old and arguably still in its early stages.

  • A ten year journey to achieve resilience to climate change

    In January 2021, the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University, Bangladesh will be holding the 7th annual Gobeshona conference with an overall theme of starting a ten year journey to promote locally led adaptation towards resilience in Bangladesh, as well as in other vulnerable developing countries, including the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) countries.

  • Worsening floods linked to human induced climate change

    As Bangladesh is inundated by severe floods not long after being hit by super cyclone Amphan, we are seeing the adverse impacts of human induced climate change in reality.

  • We must listen to the voices from the frontlines of the pandemic

    One of the distinguishing features of the global Covid-19 pandemic has been to expose who the frontline workers around the world are and who the frontline victims of the pandemic are, both from the public health perspective and as a result of the impact of lockdown measures.

  • Climate Change: Turning Bangladesh into the learning capital of the world

    The adverse impacts of human induced climate change are already occurring around the world, including in Bangladesh.

  • Collaborative research can be integral to climate action

    The government of the United Kingdom has had a very cordial relationship with Bangladesh since our independence and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) has been a significant bilateral development partner for many years.

  • Loss and damage from natural disasters made worse by climate change

    As Bangladesh assumes the leadership of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) for the next two years, including at the next Conference of Parties (COP26) to be held in Glasgow, Scotland in November 2021, there is an opportunity for Bangladesh to push for the issue of loss and damage from climate change to be made a central topic for discussion at COP26. This is quite a politically sensitive issue that goes well beyond mitigation and adaptation, which have been the main focus of climate change conferences until now.

  • Dealing with the triple emergency

    In the last few weeks, the world has been having to deal with the double emergency of the pandemic as well as climate change, while Bangladesh and West Bengal had to deal with a triple emergency, with super cyclone Amphan hitting us quite badly.

  • Bangladesh has an opportunity to be a world leader in climate change

    The current Covid-19 pandemic emergency is combining with the climate change emergency as we speak, and as we tackle the first, we also need to tackle the second at the same time.

  • Holding the next global climate change talks

    I had written in a previous column about the fact that the next Conference of Parties (COP26) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was to have been held in November 2020 in Glasgow, Scotland with the United Kingdom as COP26 President, had to be postponed to 2021 due to the global Covid-19 pandemic.

  • A renewed focus on social capital

    One of the key revelations of the Covid-19 pandemic is that things that we held to be true in the past are now seen to have been myths, and as we transition from the old order into a new (and hopefully better) order going forward, we can build a better world by fixing much of what was wrong with the old world.

  • The double whammy of Covid-19 and climate change

    One of the biggest lessons coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic is that we are living in an interlinked world where no country can cut itself off for very long and no country can tackle the problem by itself. This lesson is even more true as we battle the double whammy of Covid-19 and the climate change.

  • Will Covid-19 change how we hold climate change talks?

    As nearly the entire globe remains in lockdown and international travel is almost at a standstill, international meetings are being cancelled and often replaced by conference calls on Zoom and other online meeting platforms.

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