The topic of loss and damage from human-induced climate change has been a highly politically sensitive issue in international negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for many years with vulnerable developing countries, including Bangladesh, arguing in its favour and the rich countries arguing against it. In recent years, there have been two breakthroughs in the …

Over the last two decades, the issue of global climate change has shifted from being primarily an environmental issue to a global security and diplomatic issue as well. Hence many countries have shifted responsibility from the ministry of environment to the foreign ministry as the focal ministry to handle the issue. This is also a reflection of the fact that …

Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) all the countries meet each year at the annual Conference of Parties (COP) held in December—moving from continent to continent each year to review progress and agree on any new decisions. It is a two-week-long event with the first week dedicated to technical negotiators and the second week to high-level …

For over a decade, researchers and policymakers have considered enhancing “adaptive capacity” to be a linchpin of successful adaptation to climate change. In 2015, at the 21st Conference of Parties in Paris, the international community formally asserted the importance of increasing the ability of individuals and groups to adapt to long-term changes in the climate, and committed to doing so …

ICCCAD invited to high level Event on South-South Cooperation on Climate Change in New York The Kingdom of Morocco and the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSCC) and in cooperation with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat hosted the “South-South Cooperation (SSC) for Climate Action” on 19 September 2017 at the United Nations Headquarters in …

If we are going to tackle climate change, the world will have to work together As the COP22 winds down in Marrakesh, one of the low key but extremely important decisions made was setting up the Paris Committee on Capacity Building (PCCB). The committee will have the role of carrying out Article 11 of the Paris Agreement which is on …

Delegates from Asia-Pacific nations attending the just-opened 22nd session of the Conference of Parties (COP22) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakesh plan to push for concrete action to implement the previous session’s Paris Agreement, which formally went into effect on 4 November. “This Conference of the Parties is going to see the Paris Agreement come …

With the activation of the Paris Agreement, the issue of loss and damage becomes a central tenet of international climate governance. The UN climate body is now committed to address the impacts of climate change that go beyond adaptation. These include everything from islands sinking in the Pacific Ocean to infrastructure damage during cyclones. This is somewhat surprising given how …

I have just been to Geneva, Switzerland where I was invited to speak at the General Assembly of the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) on the role of parliamentarians in tackling climate change. The IPU is the oldest and biggest union of parliamentarians from all the world’s parliaments and its current President is Bangladeshi parliamentarian Saber Hossain Choudhury. There are four …

The tougher temperature goal was a great victory for the vulnerable countries in terms of global diplomacy and advocacy. Now comes the hard part of implementation. One of the most hotly contested and far reaching outcomes of the Paris Agreement agreed last December was the inclusion of the long term warming limit of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Going into that …