Before answering the question in the title, let’s look into Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and Blue Economy.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the independence of Bangladesh and 100 years since the establishment of Dhaka University.

Let us begin with three news highlights related to our vaccine procurement scenario—No one can show an accurate breakdown of how many doses of vaccines have been procured by Bangladesh;

The last batch of US-led NATO troops left Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield in early July of this year. They have been attacking Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan from this airfield for the last 20 years.

Hopes for an inclusive global economic recovery are fast fading. As rich countries have done little to ensure poor countries’ access to vaccines and fiscal resources, North-South “fault lines” will certainly widen.

For Bangladesh, the Delta variant of Covid-19 virus couldn’t have come at a worse time. Starting in January, our infection rate had been going down and was below 300 per day in mid-February.

Boasting an almost 1,000-kilometre border with Iran and a history of troubled relations between the Iranians and Sunni Muslim militants, including the Taliban, Afghanistan could become a bellwether for the future of the rivalry between the Islamic Republic and Saudi Arabia.

The theme of this year’s World Breastfeeding Week (August 1 to 7) is “Protecting Breastfeeding, a Shared Responsibility”.

We have all become accustomed to the economic story of China, its astonishing success in reducing poverty, its emergence as the economic powerhouse of the 21st century and its infrastructural ambitions expressed through the Belt and Road Initiative.

Money that does not circulate in the open is suspect—either it is outright black money or an accumulation of undisclosed income. The two are very different.

Bangladesh, despite being one of the world’s fastest-growing economies with exceptional GDP growth, was unable to avoid extreme food insecurity during the pandemic,

The Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant, the first ever nuclear power plant in Bangladesh, is being built. The plant capacity is 2400 MW, with two Russian reactors (model VVER-1200 of III+ generation).

Social media is flooded with children’s photos, quotes and videos that are being posted by their parents.

With around 10 million diagnosed patients, Bangladesh remains at the forefront of the global diabetes epidemic, where one out of every ten adults is diabetic, according to 2017 data from the International Diabetes Federation.

“Thousands of garment workers yesterday returned to work in industrial belts in Dhaka and elsewhere amid the nationwide shutdown, raising fears of a rapid spread of the novel coronavirus…”—this was the first sentence in a report in The Daily Star that was printed, not today, yesterday or the day before, but on April 30, 2020.

Pregnant women and lactating mothers have not been included in the Covid mass vaccination programme in Bangladesh since the beginning, and the rule is still in force.

Undoubtedly, the world needs to reform existing food systems to better serve humanity and sustainable development. But the United Nations World Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) must be consistent with UN-led multilateralism.

Politics has a strange way of repeating itself in some ways.

As we all know, Covid-19 struck Wuhan on New Year's Eve in 2019, and the city embraced total lockdown. Soon, the rest of China and the world followed. But what many don't know is Chinese education never went into lockdown.

Income growth leads to increased urbanisation, which due to higher concentration of the population in smaller geographical areas can cause higher rates of infectious diseases.