POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE | The Daily Star

  • Covid-19 and climate change

    The Covid-19 pandemic is still making its way around the world and it will be some time before it is over. Nevertheless, even at this early stage, there are some lessons that can be drawn on regarding how best to be prepared to deal with the much bigger problem of climate change impacts which will be coming soon after.

  • The transformational force behind climate movements

    The Climate Change Emergency has been declared first by the youth, led by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and her Fridays for Future movement of school children striking every Friday to urge leaders to treat climate change as a truly global emergency.

  • Protecting the environment should be everyone’s concern

    The Bangladesh parliament, led by the parliamentary standing committee on environment, recently declared a planetary emergency in Bangladesh. This is ground breaking in that most other parliaments around the world have declared a climate change emergency, but none have also added a biodiversity emergency as the Bangladesh parliament has. So ours is a twin track emergency, not just a single track.

  • Can Bangladesh become a knowledge economy?

    Over the next decade, there are going to be four mega global trends that all countries in the world will have to deal with.

  • Our missed opportunities

    According to the Global Risks Report 2020 from the World Economic Forum (WEF), biodiversity loss is now the third most serious risk our world is facing in terms of impact.

  • COP25 mistakes must not be repeated in Glasgow

    The 25th annual Conference of Parties (COP25) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was held in November 2019 in Madrid, Spain under the presidency of Chile, since the political conditions in Santiago, Chile were not conducive to holding the conference there. Unfortunately, COP25 went into overtime by two days and nights and even then, it was not possible to reach an agreement on some key topics. It was universally deemed to be a failure.

  • Preparing for the next cold wave

    Winter morn-ings in Bangladesh are usually associated with charming sights and sounds—dew drops on fallen brown leaves, shimmering colours formed by sun rays on spider webs, marigolds, dahlias and mustard flowers, and the singing of thousands of migratory birds in the haors, beels and lakes.

  • Capturing the demographic dividend while tackling climate change

    Bangladesh, quite rightly, has aspirations to meet the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as the Climate Change goals by 2030, and then to graduate into being a middle income country by 2041.

  • Why do the most vulnerable communities receive so little of the climate change funds?

    All over the world, in poor and the richer countries, the communities that are the most vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change are generally the poorest ones.

  • Promoting South-South cooperation to tackle climate change

    As Bangla-desh prepares to graduate from the Least Developed Countries (LDC) category in the next few years, we need to plan our relationship with other LDCs in the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

  • Time for a new direction as Bangladesh moves to take the helm

    The Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) currently consists of 48 vulnerable developing countries from all the different groups of ...

  • What lies ahead for climate change

    As we enter the new year of 2020, we are in fact making a very significant transition when it comes to the issue of climate change.

  • Highlights from 2019 and the path ahead

    As this is my last column for 2019, I am going to share some of its highlights and also my verdict on the year as well as some reflections on the next year and the next decade.

  • Declare a ‘climate emergency’ to protect children

    Nero fiddles, while Rome burns” is an apt metaphor for the 25th world climate summit, called the Conference of Parties (COP25), which just ended in Madrid. Government representatives from 200 countries ended their meeting, copping out from agreeing on a pathway to implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming, carbon emission targets and other related measures.

  • COP25: Long but barely fruitful

    The 25th Conference of Parties (COP25) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) started on December 2 and was due to finish after about two weeks, on December 13 (Friday).

  • The political dimension of COP25

    The 25th Conference of Parties (COP25) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) being held in Madrid

  • COP25 off to a good start

    The 25th annual Conference of the Parties (COP25) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) opened in Madrid, Spain on Monday with a high-level event of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF).

  • Rich countries must pay for climate loss and damage

    The global negotiations on how to tackle climate change take place in December at the annual Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

  • Climate emergency, planetary emergency and our survival

    The Bangladesh parliament has declared a planetary emergency in a resolution adopted a few days ago. This is indeed a major initiative and the parliamentarians should be applauded for it.

  • How can insurance play a role in tackling climate change?

    The 15th annual global microinsurance conference was held last week in Bangladesh for the first time with the theme of “Coping with climate risk”. It was inaugurated by the

  • Developing more towns - Key to climate resilience

    Bangladesh is facing two global megatrends with significant national repercussions. The first is the rapidly urbanising world we live in, where half the global population is

  • We need to declare a planetary emergency

    Humanity has made a “tragic, desperate mess” of the planet, said Sir David Attenborough, the 93-year-old naturalist and documentary filmmaker on announcing his new series of documentaries called “Seven Worlds, One Planet” due to be broadcast on the BBC.

  • Real development needs nature-based solutions

    We are all immensely proud of the economic development being achieved by Bangladesh and looking forward to our graduation from Least Developed Country (LDC) status to middle income country status within the next few years. However, as we move our development pathway forward we are facing a very significant fork in the road ahead and we will have to make some brave choices that will determine the quality of our development over the coming decade or more.

  • The challenge from Greta Thunberg on tackling climate change

    Last week in New York, the United Nations Secretary General (UNSG) Antonia Guitteres held a Global Action Summit where he invited world leaders from selected countries only to come with “plans not speeches” to raise the level of ambition to tackle climate change.

  • Coming transformation on climate change in the US

    We have known about the denial of climate change by president Trump of the United States and that he has decided to withdraw his country from the Paris Agreement and is also actively undermining efforts in the US to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

  • Climate crisis: ‘Dorian’ brings home new urgencies

    The devastation caused by Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas over the last week or so has illustrated quite clearly that even though the Caribbean has a well-developed early warning system for hurricanes and is also a part of the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), that deals with the residual impacts of such hurricanes,

  • Global Climate Week: A clarion call to address climate emergency

    This month, from September 20 to 27, the world will observe a Global Climate Week with events taking place all over the world. The key events will take place in New York, USA around the Global Climate Action Summit called by the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

  • Supporting climate adaptation should be a priority

    The developed countries of the world had agreed under the Paris Agreement to provide USD 100 billion each year, starting from 2020 onwards, to support mitigation as well as adaptation projects in developing countries.

  • The links between climate change and viral infection

    Climate change is one of the most complex challenges of this century.

  • How Bangladesh can improve access to climate funding

    Under the Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), rich countries have promised to provide, collectively, USD 100 billion every year to support the developing countries tackle climate change, both by mitigation and adaptation.

Top