The 26th annual Conference of Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was supposed to have been held this week in Glasgow, Scotland under the chairmanship of the government of the United Kingdom. It has now been postponed until November 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is very important that actions to tackle …

The Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), consisting of nearly 50 of the most climate vulnerable developing countries, which was set up a decade ago on the basis of their common vulnerability to climate change, has now evolved into a more robust group of countries who are no longer only emphasising their vulnerability but rather moving towards resilience. The leadership of the …

The scale of the global climate change emergency that is emerging in 2020 has already made it clear that nothing short of a “whole of society” approach is needed if we are going to be able to tackle it effectively over the coming decade, which is the crucial time window we have left. While this whole of society approach is …

The  historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which was agreed by all the countries that were part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in December 2015, had two major outcomes. The first was to try to keep global atmospheric temperature to below 2 degrees Centigrade and, if possible, below 1.5 degrees. The second major agreement was …

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 …

The historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change, agreed at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris, France in 2015, was a major outcome that all vulnerable developing countries, including Bangladesh, strongly fought for. We achieved an important target for the mitigation agenda with the setting of the long term …

In last week’s column, I proposed that the Bangladesh National Adaptation Plan (NAP) that is now being developed should be innovative and not just a business-as-usual (BAU) report that will gather dust on a shelf, as many such plans have done in the past. I argued that we should focus on constructing the foundations for enhancing capacity building of many …

Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), all countries are supposed to develop their respective National Adaptation Plan (NAP) according to a prescribed format provided by international experts. Many countries have already embarked on preparing their NAPs for some time, but Bangladesh has only just started its own. It is now imperative for Bangladesh to consider carrying …

Last week, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon jointly launched the new South Asian Regional office of the Global Centre on Adaptation (GCA). This was followed by the launch of the GCA’s flagship Global Youth Adaptation Network (YAN) by Saima Wajed Hossain, who is the thematic ambassador for Vulnerability of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF). This …

During July last year, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina hosted the Global Commission on Adaptation meeting in Dhaka attended by the co-chairs of the Commission, former Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon and Kristalina Georgiva, head of the International Monetary Fund. During the bilateral discussion between the Prime Minister and Ban Ki-moon, she offered to host the regional centre …