The massive cyclone Idai that devastated Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe last week has destroyed 90 percent of Beira, the second biggest city in Mozambique. This was a cyclone of unprecedented severity for that part of Africa and has been rightly attributed to human-induced climate change by the scientific community. Hence, we are now unequivocally living in a post-human-induced-climate-change world, and …

Over the last two decades or more, the global scientific community has been raising the alarm about climate change, through the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which were then considered by the governments of the world at the annual Conference of Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A landmark agreement, …

The words refugees, migrants and climate change are increasingly becoming connected to each other, but sometimes causing more noise than shedding light! The three terms have very distinct origins and global fora for discourse which were quite different and siloed in the past. However over the last year all of them have recognised the need to connect with each other. …

The topic of loss and damage from human-induced climate change has been a highly politically sensitive issue in international negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for many years with vulnerable developing countries, including Bangladesh, arguing in its favour and the rich countries arguing against it. In recent years, there have been two breakthroughs in the …

Over the last two decades, the issue of global climate change has shifted from being primarily an environmental issue to a global security and diplomatic issue as well. Hence many countries have shifted responsibility from the ministry of environment to the foreign ministry as the focal ministry to handle the issue. This is also a reflection of the fact that …

It is now well over a year since nearly 700,000 Rohingyas were forced out of Myanmar and Bangladesh opened its borders to them and gave them shelter in the Cox’s Bazar region. The immediate emergency period is coming to an end and the government of Bangladesh as well as all the international and national agencies involved in providing humanitarian assistance …

In the last week of January, the United Nations Security Council in New York held a special session on climate change as a global security threat. It was not the first time such a session had been held but it was by far a much more alarmist session as we now acknowledge that human-induced climate change is already responsible for …

Bangladesh has a long tradition of national development planning under the aegis of the General Economics Division (GED) of the Planning Commission, through the seven Five Year Plans prepared since we became an independent country. Recently, there have been a number of additional types of planning which will need to be well-aligned if we wish to achieve our goal of …

At the beginning of January 2019 Bangladesh started to take the required steps to become a climate resilient country by 2030 by achieving transformational adaptation to climate change impacts. While there are many strands to fulfil this important strategy, one of the first is to generate, disseminate and use good quality scientific knowledge so that the process is a rigorous …

As we start the new year of 2019, we have 11 years to 2030 which is an important year to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the climate change goals of mitigation as well as adaptation under the Paris Agreement. The issue of adaptation to climate change is still subject to controversy as it is difficult to measure accurately …