Among the three strategies for addressing climate change – mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage (L&D) – the latter two continue to suffer from interpretational ambiguities. Adaptation does not have an agreed definition under the climate regime. Loss and damage is not yet considered as a third strategy by developed countries. But developing countries don’t agree. Under the Paris Agreement, …
Climate change is a matter of human rights, too
The concept of human-induced climate change originated from the scientific community based on the periodic assessment reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was then picked up by policymakers at global levels. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was set up as a global treaty under which countries pledged to tackle climate change, initially …
Time to pay more attention to climate displacement
The issue of human displacement due to the adverse impacts of human-induced climate change used to be a topic of anticipatory actions, but it has become an active problem here and now. This is because the world has now entered the new era of losses and damages that are attributable to the fact that global temperature has already risen over …
How is Bangladesh writing the history of adaptation?
Our nation’s role as a vanguard against the climate crisis is indisputable
After the publication of the third assessment report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001, the world came to realize that adverse impacts of human- induced climate change would become inevitable and unavoidable and hence all countries had to prepare for those adverse impacts through adaptation. A corollary of that finding was that while all countries, both …
Developing countries are leading climate actions
The Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) was launched over 10 years ago, by then President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, and has been operating since then with a different head of government in charge of it for a two-year tenure. The current chair of CVF is Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh, whose term is scheduled to end later this year, …
Get the ball rolling to implement effective climate action
Over the last few days here in Glasgow, Scotland, over a hundred world leaders have arrived for the leaders’ summit at the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to give speeches, hold meetings with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and also have some bilateral meetings among themselves. They are not here …
Can we get some solid progress in climate action, please?
Last week, a number of events were held around the world to promote actions to tackle climate change and get everyone ready ahead of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), to be held in Glasgow, Scotland in November this year. The week started off with a high-level meeting at the United Nations in New York, co-hosted …
Delivering climate finance is the key to COP26 success
This week, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres held a high-level meeting on climate change in New York, where Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was one of the leaders invited to add momentum to the actions needed to tackle climate change before the upcoming climate conference, COP26, hosted by the United Kingdom and scheduled to be held in Glasgow in November …
Tackling climate emergency requires a global pact
The impacts of the recent hurricane Ida in the United States, which killed more than 50 people and caused floods as far as in New York, was acknowledged by President Joe Biden as being more severe because of human-induced climate change. The same has been proven unequivocally by the science of attribution for having raised global mean temperature above one …
Vulnerable countries take the lead in tackling climate change
Last week, Bangladesh hosted the climate finance summit called by the nearly 50 vulnerable developing countries that are part of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), which is chaired by Bangladesh for the current two-year term. The summit was moderated by the former President of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, who is the CVF Ambassador for Ambition, and was opened by Prime …