(Originally published here) The year 2015 that has just ended has been a landmark year for both the development as well as climate change discourse at the global level as three major agreements were reached under the United Nations. The first was the Sendai agreement on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) that was achieved in March 2015 in Sendai, Japan, the …
Bangladesh moves up the climate change knowledge ladder
(Originally published here) The climate change research community in Bangladesh, which consists of several dozen organisations, including public and private universities, national and international research organisations, Government and NGOs as well as some private sector organisations, came together over two years ago to form a collective platform for climate change knowledge generation and use in Bangladesh called “Gobeshona” ( the …
The inside story of the Paris Agreement
(Originally published here) On the night of December 12, in the French city of Paris, almost exactly a month after the horrific terrorist attacks there, the leaders of nearly two hundred countries of the world adopted the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which will replace the Kyoto Protocol from …
The Climate Vulnerable Forum Has Come of Age
(Originally published on The Daily Star here) The Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) just held its high officials’ meeting in Manila under the chairmanship of the government of the Philippines where they prepared the Manila Paris Declaration to be formally adopted at a heads of government meeting of the CVF countries in Paris on November 30. They also agreed on a …
The Paris Agreement on Climate Change – What can we expect?
(This article originally published here) Earlier this month in Bonn, Germany, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held its last round of talks to prepare the text for the Climate Change Summit to be held in December in Paris, France to finalise a new Paris Agreement at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21). The draft of the …
Innovation in Climate Finance
(Article originally published on The Daily Star here) The recent Champion of the Earth award conferred upon Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was, significantly, a recognition of the struggle against climate change of the government and people of Bangladesh. Achim Steiner, the head of UNEP, in his citation mentioned both the Bangladesh Climate Change …
The next phase in the global battle
(Article originally published on The Daily Star here) The recent award of Champion of the Earth conferred upon Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is a fitting recognition of her personal achievements, as well as that of the government and people of Bangladesh, in being a pioneer among nations in tackling climate change in particular. …
Unusual rain: Climate change to blame
Is it raining too much this year? Bangladesh’s Met office believes it is, and the pattern of this rainfall is something that has not been seen in the past decade. Weather experts blame it on the global climate change. According to data collected from the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, there are chances that this year’s rainfall will be more than what …