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.

Urbanisation is escalating worldwide. Hence cities are becoming increasingly crucial in dealing with climate change. According to UN Habitat, cities contribute to 70 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions whilst occupying only two percent of the world's land.

The United Nation's scientific body on climate change, namely the Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has just released a special report which is a scientific as well as political report of great significance and could be a game-changer in galvanising enhanced action to tackle climate change.

Climate change will hit Bangladesh, and rising temperature and sea level will affect millions in both the short- and long-term. However, it has also embarked on a path to accelerate growth and achieve middle-income status in the immediate future.

Ten years ago, under the leadership of then President Nasheed of the Maldives, the leaders of the most vulnerable developing countries came together to form the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF).

According to a World Bank (WB) report titled ”South Asia's Hotspots: The Impact of Temperature and Precipitation Changes on Living Standards”, more than 75 percent of the population (13.4 crore people) will be adversely affected by rising temperatures which will result in a rise of vector-borne and other infectious diseases.

Climate change is real and it is here to stay. There is no turning around because we have already gone too far. It will only get worse from here. Climate change is, therefore, an existential threat for our children and grandchildren for whom time is running out fast.

Over the coming decades, at the global level as well as in Bangladesh we will be faced with two major challenges: tackling poverty and climate change. Although at first glance the two issues may not seem to be linked, I will argue that we cannot tackle either without also tackling the other at the same time. This is equally true for both the global and the national level, especially for poor countries like Bangladesh.

In almost every global assessment of which countries are most vulnerable to climate change impacts, Bangladesh comes out as either first or at least in the top five, depending on the criteria used in the assessment.

In the run-up to the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in its 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) in December 2015, one of the most politically contentious issues was whether the limit of the long-term global temperature rise should be kept at 2 degrees centigrade or changed to 1.5 degrees.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was created under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to channel up to USD 100 billion a year from 2020 onwards from the developed countries to the developing countries to help them tackle climate change through both mitigation and adaptation projects.

At the 23rd Conference of Parties (COP23) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held last December under the presidency of the prime minister of Fiji, a new feature called the Talanoa Dialogue was introduced.

Earth's intact forests shrank by an area larger than Austria every year from 2014 to 2016 at a 20 percent faster rate than during the previous decade, scientists says.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was created under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to channel USD 100 billion a year starting from 2020 onwards, which the developed countries have pledged to provide to developing countries to tackle climate change through both mitigation as well as adaptation activities. The Secretariat of the GCF is located in Korea and the GCF Board has equal representation from developed and developing countries.

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 be held in Katowice, Poland in December this year.

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.

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.

In 2009 Bangladesh developed and released the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP) which was the first of its kind at that time. It was a remarkable document for a number of reasons.

Scientists in developing nations plan to step up research into dimming sunshine to curb climate change, hoping to judge if a man-made chemical sunshade would be less risky than a harmful rise in global temperatures.