Creating development pathways for alternative futures When Henry Kissinger infamously said in 1971 that Bangladesh would be a famine-prone “basket case,” he could not have predicted that less than 50 years later the country would have moved from the brink of starvation to being well on the way to middle-income status, and become a shining star for development success in …
Road to Katowice
Are we prepared enough with the uneven progress made in bangkok climate talks? The resumed 48th sessions of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA 48-2) and Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI 48-2) as well as the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA 1-6) took place from September 4-9, 2018, at the United Nations Conference …
Costs of climate change
Time to set up a global fund to pay for loss and damage from climate change 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 have seen it as opening the way for claiming compensation from them based …
Salt Attack
Understanding Bangladesh’s most complex environmental and man-made problem Most filmmakers that come to document climate change in Bangladesh include a segment on salinity intrusion in southwest Bangladesh. While is salinity intrusion is predicted to be amplified by the sea level rise, there is in fact numerous other contributing factors. The first of which is tidal surges which occur in the …
Why we need to transition to a circular economy
At the heart of the Paris Agreement lies mitigation — the seemingly insurmountable task of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions to curtail the consequences of climate change. According to various studies, 65% of greenhouse gas emissions comes from fossil fuels combustion, 24% from industrial activities among which up to 67% is estimated to come from management of materials activities. Since …
Look to the horizon
What’s the difference between development and climate change adaptation projects? As the Green Climate Fund (GCF) attempts to ramp up its funding for adaptation projects, the UN fund continues to face a major challenge: how to differentiate a development project and a climate change adaptation project. Already two projects – one from Bangladesh and the other from Ethiopia – have …