This week, the UK-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), together with the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), launched a global initiative in Dhaka to address loss and damage from human-induced climate change. The initiative, called the Alliance for Locally-Led Approaches for Transformative Action on Loss and Damage (ALL ACT on LnD), is aimed at supporting …

I have just returned from a visit to the Khulna region, both Khulna city and the Sundarbans. With the Padma Bridge cutting down the journey between Dhaka and Khulna to just a few hours means that the Khulna region is already seeing development at a much faster rate than before. This has both positive and potentially negative results – if we don’t …

Last year, the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) for climate change agreed to establish a loss and damage (L&D) finance facility to support the recovery from loss and damage caused by the increasing impacts of climate change. The decision to establish an L&D fund can be regarded as just a political win; it is not a climate win yet. …

As we enter the third year of this decade, we have only seven more years until 2030 to tackle the major global problems of climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Unfortunately, the world is not on track to meet the targets it has set for itself, so we need to work doubly hard to achieve them in less …

The series of extreme weather events in 2022 fuelled by climate change that devastated lives and livelihoods of millions – from the floods in Pakistan and China to droughts in Somalia, Ethiopia, Brazil, and Europe – set a clarion call for the long-awaited climate finance, also known as loss and damage finance. After years of hard negotiations, at the world’s …

During the negotiations on funding for loss and damage in COP27 in Egypt last November, representatives of developed countries had a lot of reservations about such a proposal. My answer to them was that, while their questions were quite legitimate, they would only get answers after we received a political commitment from their leaders to establish the funding mechanism in …

The year 2022 was indeed a critical year for tackling climate change at global, national, and local levels. Let me start at the personal level by acknowledging two major events for me. The first was at the beginning of 2022 when I was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by the British Government and later given the medal …

On December 11, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina formally launched the new Global Hub on Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) in Dhaka along with the foreign minister and environment minister, and Ban Ki-Moon, head of the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA). The new Global Hub on LLA will be located in the Dhaka office of the GCA, which is located in the …

The recent agreement by all countries to establish a new fund for loss and damage from human-induced climate change at COP27 was a simple recognition of an unfortunate reality that has existed for a long time. The reality is that the impacts that are now scientifically attributable to global temperature rise are now happening every day around the world, and …

COP27 ended a day overtime on November 20 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt with the historic achievement of a new fund for addressing loss and damage in vulnerable developing countries. Today, I want to tell the story of how this was achieved. The demand for rich countries to shoulder their responsibility for historic pollution – which has raised the global temperature …