Saleemul Huq

A recent report from Unicef mentions that 19 million (or one in three) children in Bangladesh are at risk from the effects of climate change.

The massive cyclone Idai that devastated Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe last week has destroyed 90 percent of Beira, the second biggest city in Mozambique.

Over the last two decades or more, the global scientific community has been raising the alarm about climate change, through the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which were then considered by the governments of the world at the annual Conference of Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

At the global level there has been a recent set of decisions in the different fora dealing with refugees, migrants and climate change to bring the three issues together and plan better so that we can avoid potential future crisis.

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.

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.

It is now well over a year since nearly 700,000 Rohingyas were forced out of Myanmar and Bangladesh opened its borders to them and gave them shelter in the Cox's Bazar region.

In the last week of January, the United Nations Security Council in New York held a special session on climate change as a global security threat.

Bangladesh has a long tradition of national development planning under the aegis of the General Economics Division (GED) of the Planning Commission, through the seven Five Year Plans prepared since we became an independent country.

At the beginning of January 2019 Bangladesh started to take the required steps to become a climate resilient country by 2030 by achieving transformational adaptation to climate change impacts.

As we start the new year of 2019, we have 11 years to 2030 which is an important year to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the climate change goals of mitigation as well as adaptation under the Paris Agreement.

As 2018 comes to an end, it can be said that the year has proved to be a major tipping point for the issue of climate change globally as well as in Bangladesh.

After a time extension of an extra day, the Rulebook for the Paris Agreement was adopted at COP24 in Katowice, Poland on December 15. It is a significant achievement as it will enable all countries to implement all the different elements of the Paris Agreement in a manner that can be measured, reported and verified in a uniform manner.

The first week of the two-week 24th Conference of Parties (COP24) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate

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.

Bangladesh is among the world's most at-risk countries in relation to climate change and the Government of Bangladesh has recognised climate change as one of the most serious threats to poverty reduction and development, and as such has made a number of ambitious commitments to tackle it.

The third annual conference on urban resilience was just held in Dhaka with well over 300 participants from home and abroad, including government officials, mayors, NGOs, researchers, the private sector and the media.

In December 2015 in Paris, at the 21st annual Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 174 countries, including the United States of America under then President Obama, agreed to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change

In the Paris Agreement on climate change, which was agreed on in December 2015 at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Last week in the Hague, the Netherlands a new Global Commission for Adaptation to Climate Change was launched with the former Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, Bill Gates, and Kristalina Georgieva, head of the World Bank as the three heads.