Haseeb Md. Irfanullah

How to integrate the health sector more prominently in our national adaptation actions?

Bangladesh’s youth ministry or its Department of Youth Development (DYD) isn’t one of the 25 ministries and divisions receiving climate-relevant allocations.

Environment and ecosystem rehabilitation has always been a cross-cutting issue in the JRPs. It is indeed exciting for environmentalists to see NbS finding its place in the world's largest refugee camp sheltering about a million of Myanmar’s Muslim minority.

Since the government is now preparing its annual national budget for FY2023-24, what changes can we expect to see in the climate-relevant allocations, post-NAP2050?

In the last two months of 2022, two large global events took place on two continents flanking the Atlantic Ocean. In November, around 35,000 people met at the Egyptian tourist city of Sharm El-Sheikh for the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27).

Capacity development is an important part of mainstreaming NbS and LLA.

On November 2, the government made the long-awaited National Adaptation Plan of Bangladesh (2023-2050) public.

Two concepts related to climate change – Locally-Led Adaptation (LLA) and Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) – have gained significant momentum over the last couple of years.

The 2022 JRP has five strategic objectives to support the affected Bangladeshi and Rohingya populations.

In the last couple of months, we have been listening to discussions on how to build on the outcomes of the COP26—the 26th Conference of the Parties for climate change held in Glasgow, UK last year.

As we enter the third year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the societal challenges we were fighting in the pre-Covid times all got worse over the past two years—be it extreme poverty, food and water crises, biodiversity loss, ecological degradation, or climatic change and associated disasters. But, can nature still be a part of tackling these challenges?

If we want to address our development and societal challenges with the help of nature, we have three options. While nature-based solutions (NbS) have been discussed in this column extensively, let’s talk about two other options: nature-driven solutions and nature-inspired solutions.

The Government of Bangladesh has recently drafted the Mujib Climate Prosperity Plan Decade 2030.

On November 13, 2021, the two-week 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, ended in Scotland with the participating nations agreeing upon the Glasgow Climate Pact.

When I talk about Bangladesh’s climate change response, I get excited by the thought of three milestones.

Over the last four years, the Rohingya refugee crisis has changed the Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf Peninsula on many levels.

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

If we track the history of floating agriculture in Bangladesh, we may find six major phases. It is difficult to pinpoint when floating cultivation began in Bangladesh—the current reckoning goes up to 400 years ago.

Over the last 50 years, Bangladesh’s journey towards community development has essentially been a result of government, donors, and NGOs coming together to work for the vulnerable people.

In the second half of 2017, the government did something unprecedented in response to an unprecedented situation—it sheltered about 750,000 Rohingyas fleeing from a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” by the Myanmar army.