The Least Developed Countries (LDC) group constitutes 47 countries, mostly in Africa and some in Asia (including Bangladesh), officially recognised by the United Nations (UN). Countries belonging to the group are entitled to duty-free access to developed country markets for their goods and are recognised under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as the most vulnerable countries …

Last week the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) meeting was held in Geneva, Switzerland with more than 4,000 delegates from all over the world and many different stakeholders including government, UN agencies, private sector, civil society, women’s groups, indigenous peoples’ groups, youth groups, groups related to people with disabilities, and many others. I had been invited to …

The group of Least Developed Countries (LDC) has been negotiating under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for many years and has continuously taken leadership roles at key points. For example, the push for and successful inclusion (against great odds) of the long-term global temperature goal of 1.5 degrees Centigrade in the Paris Agreement in 2015. As …

The recent devastation in Mozambique due to two successive hurricanes (Aida and Kenneth) of unprecedented severity for southern Africa, are a clear indicator that we are now living in a climate changed world. And that the huge loss and damage sustained by the people of Mozambique is due to human-induced climate change and not just natural causes. This means that …

It has now been well over five years since the Green Climate Fund (GCF) was set up with its headquarters in Songdo, Korea to support both mitigation and adaptation projects and programmes in developing countries. It received an initial contribution of around USD 10 billion and is now undergoing a review of its performance in anticipation of a major replenishment …

A recent report from Unicef mentions that 19 million (or one in three) children in Bangladesh are at risk from the effects of climate change. This is indeed an alarming potential risk for the country. However, all such reports about future adverse impacts of future climate change have an unwritten codicil which says “if we do not prepare ourselves”. We …

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 …

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. However, there have been several breakthroughs on the issue including the Warsaw International Mechanism …

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 …

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. However, in the last twelve months or so the same scientists have now been saying with a great deal of …