We must urgently prioritise adaptation to address the climate emergency
Building back a greener Bangladesh
The title of this article has been borrowed from an on-line discussion organised by the Policy Research Institute on June 20, 2021. I was a panelist at the event, which some current and former World Bank officials had participated in, together with most of the famous environmental experts of Bangladesh. With its physical and socio-economic parameters, Bangladesh can be …
Vaccine nationalism, global public good and the poor
In a desperate move to inoculate from Covid-19, we are witnessing a kind of vaccine nationalism worldwide, which has manifested in a race to procure vaccine doses, particularly by those having the means and power to do so. The Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) called this situation a “catastrophic moral failure” in sharing Covid vaccines. He …
Adaptation finance at the conflux of climate crisis, Covid-19 and debt distress
Covid-19 has hit all countries of the world, both rich and poor, but the low income countries (LICs) are hit hardest, and half of them are at high risk of or are already in debt distress. Although in April this year, the G20 Finance Ministers endorsed a Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) to grant temporary relief to the LICs to …
Are we ready to shed the LDC tag?
While many countries are entering the fourth industrial revolution, many of our expatriate workers do not even know how to use washing machines On June 22 UNDP, Dhaka organized an online discussion on the graduation of Bangladesh from the LDC status in view of Covid-19. The event was attended by a good number of local and foreign participants and the …
Crafting image in an age of electronic globalisation
Recently, quite a number of reports have been published in both national and foreign media outlets about how two healthcare providers in Bangladesh issued fake Covid-19 certificates. Obviously, the negative coverage has tarnished the image of our nation abroad. We have had reports that the foreign minister had chaired a high-level, inter-ministerial meeting to discuss the immediate ramifications of these …
Covid-19 challenges the conventional security paradigm
Coronavirus is razing the world to the ground, continuing to claim human lives—the latest count exceeds well over 200,000, with the number of infected running over three million. The deadly virus is reported to be mutating, with no prospect yet of getting it under control. The comity of nations, both mighty and weak, stand haplessly helpless before a mortal threat. …
How crisis awakens altruism in humanity
Beginning in December in China’s Wuhan City, the highly infectious COVID-19 has crossed boundaries and oceans with supersonic speed. It has already claimed more than 83,000 lives, with one million and a half infected so far. In the process, the world has come to a standstill. The numbers of deaths and confirmed cases are rising by leaps and bounds. No …
CLIMATE NEGOTIATIONS UNDER UNFCCC An effective platform for branding Bangladesh
The 25th Conference of Parties (COP25) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ended just days ago. Already, many reviews, mostly negative, have come out globally including in this newspaper. I called the COPs often a process of “active inaction” in my first book on climate politics published by Routledge in 2014. The zenith of its failure was …
COP25: Another round of active inaction
The UN’s longest-ever climate negotiations, continuing non-stop for almost two extra days, drew to a close on December 15 with not much to celebrate. Nations on both sides—developed and developing—held hardline positions resulting in utter disappointment, so expressed grudgingly by the UN Secretary General himself. Countries failed to agree on many of the sought-after outcomes, including rules to set up …
