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 … Read More
Fixing the rules for climate change action from Fiji to Poland The Paris Agreement on Climate Change adopted at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP 21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in December 2015 is the road map for all countries to tackle climate change by 2030. However, the rule book for the countries to follow will have to be agreed at COP 24, to … Read More
The battle over terminology: Adaptation vs resilience In the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), every word used can be contested between countries (sometimes they even argue for hours about a coma!). Hence every term has to be accepted by consensus by all the countries for it to be adopted in any UNFCCC decision. Under these circumstances the accepted term under the … Read More
Time to make polluters pay for climate change At the 19th Conference of Parties (COP19) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Warsaw, Poland in 2013, there was a breakthrough agreement to set up the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) on Loss and Damage with its Executive Committee having equal representation from developed and developing countries. Bangladesh was also made a member of the … Read More
Building national capacity to tackle climate change Under Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), all countries are supposed to ensure awareness, education and capacity building to tackle climate change with the developed countries also promising to support these efforts in the developing countries. Each year, at the annual Conference of the Parties (COP), there is a negotiating track to review progress … Read More
The ‘Talanoa Dialogue’ on Climate Change The 196 countries that are signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meet each year around December at the annual Conference of Parties (COP) to review progress on implementing the decisions. The COP moves to a different continent each year as each continent hosts it in turn. The last (23rd) conference, known as COP23, was the … Read More
