Saleemul Huq, one of the most persistent long-term advocates of a ‘loss and damage’ fund on climate change, explores the origins and potential of the breakthrough at the recent COP. For thirty years the vulnerable developing countries led by the small island states had been demanding under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) the creation of a fund …

Globally, 24% of the urban population lives in informal settlements. Such settlements often have inadequate essential services, including housing, water, sanitation, energy, transportation and communications. In Bangladesh, 47.2% of the population lives in urban informal settlements. According to the World Health Organization, 60% of people in Bangladesh are forced to drink contaminated water, many of whom live in urban informal settlements. Thus the lack of availability …

People living in remote areas in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) are more vulnerable to lack of adequate and safe water. Many people are experiencing severe water shortages due to the degradation of natural resources, including streams, and the unsustainable depletion of forest resources. This situation worsens in the dry season and persists from February to May due to a …

Introduction The impacts of climate change are evident on the social, economic and political spheres of the least developed and developing nations, and Bangladesh is no exception. Over the last few decades, multiple studies claim that the intensity and frequency of rapid and slow onset events such as cyclones, storm surges, sea level rise, salinity intrusion, floods, flash floods, erratic …

Indigenous peoples (IPs) have long been living with nature and observing natural changes whilst sustainably managing and protecting more than 25% of world’s landscape. While IPs constitute only 5% of the world’s population, they contribute to 80% of global biodiversity conservation. However, they are often subjected to systemic racial, socio-economic and legal discrimination resulting in dispossession of their lands and …

Despite promising steps taken at COP26 in Glasgow last November, the world is off track to close the gap to limit global temperatures to 1.5°C. There is a growing consensus that a failure to do this is not only an environmental issue, but a human rights issue too, and has been officially recognised as such (UN Human Rights Council Resolution …

I have written about the need to ramp up adaptation in order to avoid the worst impacts of human-induced climate change around the world, as lead author on adaptation for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for over a decade. So the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC containing that message was nothing new. However, what was new and …

‘What benefit will we get by talking to you?’ is one of the most common questions residents ask researchers in informal settlements in Bangladesh. Both extreme and slow-onset climate change-induced events are increasing the vulnerability of people, especially those who are already socially and economically marginalised. As this trend is becoming more prominent globally, social research on climate change and its impacts …

On 9 August 2021, the science working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report showed that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are responsible for approximately 1.1°C of warming since 1850-1900. Climate change is not just what is happening now and will happen in the future but also what has been happening for over a century. Today …