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 …

Earlier this month, the fifth Asia Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum was held in Colombo, Sir Lanka. This year’s theme was “Adapting and Living below 2C.” This is because the UN climate treaty — the Paris Agreement, which goes into force next week — set a upper temperature limit of 2C warming above pre-industrial temperatures. Given that Bangladesh is a …

Approaching the 55/55 threshold The original article was published as Paris Agreement On Climate Change at Daily Star, an Op-Ed by Dr. Saleemul Huq. The historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change that was agreed at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Paris, France last December, was a major …

The original article was published as POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE at Daily Star, an Op-Ed by Dr. Saleemul Huq. Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), at its 7th Conference of Parties (COP7) held in Marrakech, Morocco in 2001, adaptation to climate change was recognised for the first time through the mandate to support the Least Developed …

This paper aims to raise awareness about Loss and Damage (L&D) and ignite conversation about how Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and Loss & Damage (L&D) can be linked in order to ensure more sustainable strategies for building resilience in Pakistan. Example fallback content: This browser does not support PDFs. Please download the PDF to view it: …

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will define the priorities of the UN’s development agenda beyond 2015. But the reality of climate change impacts will render these aspirational goals almost impossibly challenging for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) unless the current level of ambition in development and climate action is urgently increased. This briefing summarises our analysis of the projected impacts …

(Originally published here) The year 2015 that has just ended has been a landmark year for both the development as well as climate change discourse at the global level as three major agreements were reached under the United Nations. The first was the Sendai agreement on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) that was achieved in March 2015 in Sendai, Japan, the …

(This article was originally published here) Malnutrition in Bangladesh may have reduced significantly in the past 20 years, but more than 41% of its young children remain stunted due to chronic undernutrition. According to the World Food Programme, poor nutrition ultimately costs the country more than $1bn in lost productivity every year. Worryingly, the human and economic cost of poor …

(This article was originally published here) The impact of climate change on people depends on factors such as geographic location, social status, level of income, age, race, class, and, of course, gender. Existing and pervasive social inequalities deeply influence how vulnerable or resilient a certain group of people is to climate change, and how quickly they are able to recover …

(This article was originally published here) The options to earn a living in Buddhamari village, where Mahera lives, are limited and full of peril. The Mongla upazilla in the Bagerhat district where the village is located suffers from high salinity which makes fishing, crab farming, collecting, and selling fuel wood from the Sundarbans some of the few livelihood options. Croplands …