Climate Change
Climate change has huge impacts on fishery, aquaculture-reliant communities in Bangladesh: Speakers
Speakers at a dialogue said communities that depend on fisheries and aquaculture in Bangladesh are at the forefront of climate change impacts.
They said small-scale artisanal (traditional) fisheries and aquaculture make an invaluable contribution to the country’s food and nutrition security and the fishing communities need assistance to adapt to the effects of climate change.
The speaker came up with remarks at a dialogue on ‘The impact of climate change on the country’s fisheries sector’ held on Sunday at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in Dhaka to mark the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture 2022.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is the lead agency to celebrate the occassion this year in collaboration with other bodies of the United Nations.
They said more than one million people in Bangladesh depend on small-scale fisheries and aquaculture for their livelihoods. Nearly 90 percent of all marine capture in Bangladesh is from small-scale or artisanal fishers, they added.
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Robert D. Simpson, FAO Representative in Bangladesh, said “Small-scale fishers in Bangladesh make an invaluable contribution to the country’s food and nutrition security, as well as the rural economy. FAO is committed to working with Bangladesh to strengthen the fisheries sector, with a focus on helping fishing communities adapt to the effects of climate change.”
Norman, FAO’s Senior Technical Advisor for fisheries and climate change, said “Climate change is having profound impacts on fishery and aquaculture-reliant communities and the ecosystems they depend on, especially in tropical regions. Through capacity development and policy reform, FAO in Bangladesh is helping to build resilience in these communities so that they are better able to cope.”
Read more: UN: Climate change, depleted resources leave world hungry
Small-scale fishers and fish workers account for 90 percent of the people who work worldwide in capture fisheries values chains—with 492 million people depending at least partially on small-scale fisheries for their livelihoods, said speakers.
Climate Change: Momen urges global community for more support to developing countries
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen today urged the international community to scale up financial and technological support for the developing countries to cope with the adverse impacts of climate change.
The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and the resulting cost-of-living crisis around the world, aggravated by sanctions and counter-sanctions, cannot be a pretext for diminishing or diverting the much needed financing for tackling the climate crisis in order to save planet earth, he said.
Speaking at the launching ceremony of the global hub of Locally Led Adaptation (LLA), Momen said the government of Bangladesh stands ready to provide full support to the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) to achieve the goal of the global hub which is to promote Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) at scale, with speed, to reduce climate risks for populations and sections of society that are most vulnerable to climate change.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina joined the launching ceremony virtually as the chief guest.
"The kind presence of our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at this launch is clear testimony to our unstinting support," Momen said.
Read more: $230bn needed: PM seeks support from global partners to implement climate adaptation plan
The Foreign Minister congratulated Ban Ki-moon and the entire GCA team once again.
"I feel personally pleased to be able to serve as a member of the GCA Governing Body. The launch of the Global Hub today is indeed a positive step forward from our decision to host the GCA Regional Office in Dhaka. Soon we plan to organize other events," he said.
Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Md. Shahab Uddin, 8th Secretary General of the United Nations and Chair of the Board, Global Center on Adaptation Ban Ki-moon, Chief Executive Officer, Global Center on Adaptation Prof. Dr. Patrick Verkooijen and British High Commissioner to Bangladesh Robert Chatterton Dickson spoke at the launching ceremony held at Foreign Service Academy.
Momen thanked the government of the United Kingdom for its support in establishing the global hub. "I hope, following the UK, other countries/ institutions will come forward with generous funding."
Each year, Momen said, more than 6,50,000 people of Bangladesh are being uprooted from their homes, from their traditional jobs, due to erratic climate changes and global warming and river erosion and the government has the responsibility to rehabilitate them although the government has no role in contributing to their uprooting.
There are varieties of estimates that say that around 20% of the coastal areas of Bangladesh will be flooded, and there could be millions uprooted from their homes.
"If millions of people are uprooted from their homes it will create a global security problem," Momen said, adding that "before such a situation happens, I would request global leaders to come forward to share the burden of their rehabilitation and also take corrective action so that that situation never happens."
The Foreign Minister said, "Our journey with GCA is promising and progressing. It pleases me to witness that over a span of just 2 years, GCA and the Bangladesh Government have developed the adaptation activities."
Read more: New abnormal: Climate disaster damage ‘down’ to $268 billion
Bangladesh is ready to share similar home-grown solutions such as floating agriculture, rainwater harvesting, early warning system, climate resistant crop varieties with other vulnerable countries through this Global Hub, he said.
Drinkwell Bangladesh receives US Award for Corporate Excellence 2022
Drinkwell Bangladesh, a US company providing safe and affordable water directly to residents of densely packed neighbourhoods in Dhaka, has received the Secretary of State's Award for Corporate Excellence (ACE) 2022 in the climate resilience category.
"Drinkwell is building resilience to climate change in Bangladesh, where only about a third of the population has access to safe drinking water. That's critical for avoiding serious waterborne illnesses like cholera and typhoid fever," Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Jose W Fernandez said at the award ceremony in Washington DC early Saturday.
"As climate change warms our planet, droughts and rising sea levels are making clean water even scarcer, drying up some sources and contaminating other sources with seawater. So one of Drinkwell's founders developed a water purification system that's cheaper and that's more efficient. And it's easier to operate than other models."
Read: Drinkwell, Bangladesh among winners of 2022 US Award for Corporate Excellence
"The company has also created a new delivery method, ATM – ATM-style machines – that sell and dispense clean water in Bangladesh and are more accessible for people whose homes aren't connected to water pipes," the under secretary of state said.
"For about eight years, since 2015, Drinkwell has created hundreds of jobs for people in Bangladesh and brought almost 200 million gallons of clean water to low-income communities in Dhaka, enough drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people a year."
"Drinkwell is also a testament to the power of international exchanges. And one of the company's founders is a Bangladeshi American whose grandfather died of a waterborne illness," Fernandez said.
Read More: BAT Bangladesh scoops up ‘ICMAB Best Corporate Award’ for sixth time
"He – so he got a Fulbright – he got a Fulbright to study the problem and potential solutions to Bangladesh, and there he met a chemical engineering professor from an American university, and together the two of them went on to found Drinkwell."
Earlier, the US Department of State's Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs announced four winners for this year's edition of the ACE award in the responsible business operations, climate resilience, and inclusive economic growth categories. The other winners of the award are Anova Indonesia, Gap India, and Intel Costa Rica.
Established in 1999, the ACE recognises the crucial role US companies are playing in elevating higher standards of business conduct. Together, these companies are leading the way in addressing some of the greatest global challenges.
Read more: Walton wins ICMAB Best Corporate Award
'Law of the Sea more relevant than ever with oceans in dire straits'
The UN chief has said the adoption by most nations of the world of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 40 years ago is more relevant than ever as the oceans are now in dire straits.
Speaking at a major General Assembly meeting marking the 40th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention Thursday, António Guterres highlighted the breadth of the accord, spanning from "the air we breathe, to the atmosphere that sustains all life, to the ocean-based industries that employ some 40 million people, to the species that call the ocean home."
Among the key provisions of the Convention are the conservation of the world's fisheries, marine protection, the right to resources within 200 nautical miles of national shorelines, and of increasing importance, the sustainable and equitable management of mineral-related activities in international waters.
Guterres said around 35 percent of the world's fisheries are simply being overexploited. "Sea levels are rising as the climate crisis continues, and the ocean is acidifying and choked with pollution."Coral reefs are bleaching, "epic floods" threaten coastal cities everywhere, and too often, "people working in ocean-based industries are not accessing the support or safe working conditions they need and deserve."
Read: UN chief appeals for more fund from developed countries to help preserve biodiversity
The UN chief said the recently adopted Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies needed to be adopted swiftly, ensuring that all policies towards the ocean are "underpinned by the best science and the best economic and social expertise."
He said it meant bringing the wisdom and knowledge of Indigenous peoples and local communities into the Convention, ending what he called the plastic pollution crisis, and concluding next year the agreement on marine biological diversity of areas beyond national borders.
The governments should develop laws and policies that put protection and conservation first, while marine industries and investors, should make conservation, protection and climate resilience a top priority, along with worker safety, the UN chief added.
Csaba Kőrösi, president of the General Assembly, said the Convention was known by many as the constitution of the oceans.
Read: UN chief warns planet is heading toward `climate chaos'
"The fact that UNCLOS is just as relevant as ever is a true UN success story. This document can serve as an excellent example of what can be achieved when multilateralism is done right. What global governance can and should look like," he added.
New abnormal: Climate disaster damage ‘down’ to $268 billion
This past year has seen a horrific flood that submerged one-third of Pakistan, one of the three costliest U.S. hurricanes on record, devastating droughts in Europe and China, a drought-triggered famine in Africa and deadly heat waves all over.
Yet this wasn’t climate change at its worst.
With all that death and destruction in 2022, climate-related disaster damages are down from 2021, according to insurance and catastrophe giant Swiss Re. That’s the state of climate change in the 2020s that $268 billion in global disaster costs is a 12% drop from the previous year, where damage passed $300 billion.
The number of U.S. weather disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage is only at 15 through October and will likely end the year with 16 or 17, down from 22 and 20 in the last two years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But because of Hurricane Ian, overall damage amounts are probably going to end up in the top three in American history.
Weather disasters, many but not all of them turbocharged by human-caused climate change, are happening so frequently that this year’s onslaught, which 20 years ago would have smashed records by far, now in some financial measures seems a bit of a break from recent years.
Welcome to the new abnormal.
“We’ve almost gotten used to extremes. And this year compared to many years in the past would be considered a pretty intense year, but compared to maybe the most extreme years, like a 2017, 2020 and 2021, it does look like ... a slight adjustment down,” said NOAA applied meteorologist and economist Adam Smith, who calculates the billion dollar disasters for the agency. “We’re just getting used to it but that’s not a good way to move into the future.”
Read: 'With enough foreign funding, Bangladesh can do more to face climate risks'
Wildfires in the United States weren’t as costly this year as the last couple years, but the Western drought was more damaging than previous years, he said. America’s billion dollar disasters in 2022 seemed to hit every possible category except winter storms: hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, heat waves, hail storms and even a derecho.
When it comes to 2022’s financial damages globally and the United States, Ian, which walloped Florida, was the big dog, even though Pakistan’s flooding was more massive and deadly. In terms of just looking at dollars not people, Ian’s damages eclipsed the drought-triggered African famine that affected more people. It also overshadowed river levels in China and Europe that dropped to levels so low it caused power and industrial problems and the heat waves in Europe,India and North America that were deadly and record-breaking.
Smith said NOAA hasn’t finished calculating the damages from Ian yet, but there’s a good chance it will have more than $100 billion in damage, pushing past 2012’s Superstorm Sandy that swamped New York and New Jersey, ranking only behind 2005’s Katrina and 2017’s Harvey for damaging hurricanes.
In the 1980s, the United States would average a billion-dollar weather disaster every 82 days. Now it’s every 18 days, Smith said. That’s not inflation because damages are adjusted to factor that out, he said. It’s nastier weather and more development, people and buildings in harm’s way, he said.
Globally “if you zoom in the last six years, 2017 to 2022, this has been particularly bad” especially compared to the five years before, said Martin Bertogg, Swiss Re’s head of catastrophic peril.
“It felt like a regime change, some people called it a new normal,” Bertogg said. But he thinks it was more getting back, after a brief respite, to a long-term trend of disaster costs steadily rising 5% to 7% a year.
Validation workshop held to share updated Climate Change Gender Action Plan
A validation workshop was held on the updated Climate Change Gender Action Plan (CcGAP) Thursday at a Dhaka hotel to share the updated CcGAP 2022 with a wide range of officials and practitioners in climate change and gender.
UN Women in partnership with Bangladesh Climate Change Trust (BCCT) under the leadership of the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change (MoEFCC) with technical support from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS), and Centre for Climate Change and Environmental Research (C3ER) drove the update process.
The first CcGAP was produced in 2013 when the attempt was to align it with the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP 2009).
The MoEFCC took the initiative to revise it as a lot of advancements had taken place since at the international and national levels, such as Goal 13 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Paris Climate Agreement, Mujib Climate Prosperity Plan, Delta Plan, Perspective Plan, and National Adaptation Plan (NAP).
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The CcGAP needs to align with all these key drivers for climate change to make the plan effective and thus enhance the process of gender mainstreaming into the national policies, strategies, and sectoral plans.
Managing Director (Additional Secretary) of Bangladesh Climate Change Trust (BCCT) Nurun Naher Hena attended the event as chief guest.
Chaired by Diya Nanda, deputy country representative of UN Women, Nayoka Martinez Backstrom, first secretary (environment and climate change) at the Embassy of Sweden, Raquibul Amin, country representative of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Md Khairuzzaman, director (planning, development, and negotiation) of BCCT), and Dilruba Haider, programme specialist of UN Women, spoke at the event.
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Nurun Naher said: "We need to develop action plans and toolkits like Climate Change Gender Action Plan to ensure development projects and policies related to climate change and other sectors are gender-responsive. That's how the gap with regard to gender integration into mainstreaming sectors like climate change can be addressed."
Nayoka Martinez said: "The updated Climate Change Gender Action Plan has proposed a number of indicators. An evidence-based monitoring mechanism would strengthen the process of tracking progress that would also enable the implementation of the action plans."
Diya said: "Integration of sex-disaggregated data is critical to mainstream gender in the sector-specific policies and strategies. Women are disproportionately affected due to societal norms, systemic gender inequalities, reproductive obligations, and so on."
"So, collection of Sex, Age, and Disability Disaggregated Data (SADDD) in every aspect is crucial to address the different needs and vulnerabilities of different groups of marginalised people."
Climate shocks have the potential to disrupt food system: Matia Chowdhury
Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Ministry of Agriculture Matia Chowdhury said on Saturday that climate shocks have the potential to affect the food system, increase inequality and jeopardise people's access to food.
Matia said this while speaking as chief guest at a regional dialogue held by The South Asian Policy Leadership for Improved Nutrition and Growth (SAPLING) at Hotel Pan Pacific Sonargaon in the capital recently.
Speaking as chief guest at the event, Matia added that the Bangladesh government has ensured substantial progress in ensuring food security for the population.
Read: 7.1 million Bangladeshis displaced by climate change in 2022: WHO
“Bangladesh is prone to frequent climate shocks that can potentially harm food secuirty. That’s why I believe this dialogue by SAPLING is a great opportunity for cross-learning, knowledge-sharing and for the development of common standards among the member countries for a productive future in food security,” said Matia.
The dialogue highlighted the need for technological collaboration and transfers, strengthening knowledge dissemination and exchanges, building capacities, demonstrating solutions, creating financing opportunities and mainstreaming gender across South Asian food systems.
The dialogue saw participation from government delegations, multilateral organisations, private sector entities, research institutions and civil society organisations from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka.
The dialogue focused on three thematic areas--climate-smart food systems, post-harvest losses, and food safety standards.
Read: Climate Change: UN, Bangladesh to strengthen cooperation
The event was jointly organised by BRAC, the current SAPLING Secretariat, in collaboration with IPE Global Limited, an India based international development consulting firm and SAPLING’s knowledge partner.
Shamsul Alam, State Minister for the Ministry of Planning, Siddharth Chaturvedi, Senior Programme Officer of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Amadou Ba, Senior Agriculture Economist at The World Bank’s (WB) Dhaka office, among others, spoke at the event.
7.1 million Bangladeshis displaced by climate change in 2022: WHO
With an aim to support countries and territories to build professional competence and capacity to adequately address refugee and migrant health issues, the World Health Organization (WHO) is organising the third edition of its annual Global School on Refugee and Migrant Health in Dhaka with a focus on capacity-building.
Over five days, from November 28 to December 2, policymakers, UN partner agencies, academia, members of civil society, and stakeholders at the Global School will exchange knowledge and experiences to address key elements of capacity-building.
The e-learning hybrid event hosted by the Ministry of Health, Bangladesh will be streamed globally.
Read more: COP27: How will UN climate deal on loss and damage work?
Globally, one in eight or over one billion people today are migrants with 281 million international migrants and many million individuals who are stateless, WHO said.
Climate change, rising inequality, conflicts, trade, and population growth are accelerating these trends.
The health workforce has a vital role in providing for the health rights and needs of refugees and migrants.
Read more: Climate Change: UN, Bangladesh to strengthen cooperation
“Migration and displacement can have deep and long-lasting impacts on physical and mental health and well-being, and cultural and linguistic differences, financial barriers, stigma and discrimination can all hamper access to health services for refugees and migrants,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General on Monday.
“Health workers have a crucial role in helping to overcome these barriers. The WHO Global School on Refugee and Migrant Health is a valuable resource for building the capacity of health workers to better serve refugees and migrants.”
While not all refugees and migrants are vulnerable, often they are, due to an array of determinants, from xenophobia and discrimination to poor living, housing, and working conditions, and inadequate access to health services that are people-centered and which are sensitive to refugee and migrant health needs.
Read More: Time running out for climate negotiators over loss and damage
“Human right to health is a right that extends to all people everywhere, especially refugees and migrants. Because to be truly respected, protected and fulfilled, a right must be fully enjoyed by the most marginalized and vulnerable – those at risk of or who are already being left behind, which often includes people on the move,” said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia addressing the participants.
Held in a different location each year, the Global School aims to leverage the learnings and experiences of countries in close collaboration with WHO and governments.
This year, over 7.1 million Bangladeshis were displaced by climate change, a number that could reach 13.3 million by 2050, according to WHO.
Read More: UN climate talks drag into extra time with scant progress
Since 1978, the country has also witnessed three major influxes of forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals totalling more than one million people each with unique medical needs and housed in one of the world’s largest and most densely populated camps in Cox’s Bazar.
“Not only has Bangladesh provided them access to free health care – including, most recently, COVID-19 vaccines – but it has also made concerted efforts to address key social, economic, environmental, and legal vulnerabilities,” said the Regional Director.
“The yearly Global School on Refugee and Migrant Health is a flagship of the WHO Health and Migration Programme and an opportunity to strengthen the strategic and operational collaboration with Regional and country offices on refugee and migrant health towards the implementation of the Global Action Plan on promoting the health of refugees and migrants 2019-2023 (GAP),” said Dr Santino Severoni, Director of the Health and Migration Programme.
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Open to all audiences, the Global School aims to reach a diverse audience of policy makers, health sector managers, and officers working at different levels within Ministries of Health.
Researchers, University students, nongovernmental agencies, youth representatives and journalists also participate.
“From each context to the next, no challenge is the same, nor will there be the solution. But of critical need to all countries and health systems is a health workforce that is well-trained, culturally sensitive and competent, and which is sensitive to the needs of refugees and migrants, their languages and unique health problems,” said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh.
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Energy-rich Qatar faces fast-rising climate risks at home
At a suburban park near Doha, the capital city of Qatar, cool air from vents in the ground blasted joggers on a November day that reached almost 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit).
The small park with air-conditioned paths is an apt illustration of World Cup host Qatar’s answers, so far, to the rising temperatures its people face. The wealthy Gulf Arab nation has been able to pay for extreme adaptive measures like this thanks to the natural gas it exports to the world.
A small peninsula that juts out into the Persian Gulf, Qatar sits in a region that, outside the Arctic, is warming faster than anyplace else on earth.
“It's already bad. And it's getting worse," said Jos Lelieveld, an atmospheric chemist at Germany's Max Planck Institute. Part of the reason is the warming waters of the Persian Gulf, a shallow, narrow sea that contributes to stifling humidity in Qatar during some months.
“It’s a pretty difficult environment. It’s quite hostile,” said Karim Elgendy, an associate fellow at the London-based Chatham House think tank. Without its ability to pay for imported food, heavy air-conditioning and desalinated ocean water, he said, the contemporary country couldn't exist.
Already, Qatar has faced a significant rise in temperatures compared to pre-industrial times. Scientists and others concerned about climate change are trying to keep the Earth as a whole from warming by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) on average because research shows it will be profoundly disruptive, making many people homeless, inundating coastlines and destroying ecosystems.
“Qatar has an enormous amount to lose in terms of the effects of climate change,” said Mohammed Ayoub, a professor at the Environment and Energy Research Institute at Qatar's Hamad bin Khalifa University. It is one of the world's hottest countries and will experience even more heat extremes, floods, droughts and sand and dust storms.
CLIMATE PLEDGES
If Qatar is one of the world’s wealthiest nations per capita, it is also one of the most polluting per person. Around this country slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Connecticut, large SUVs are a common sight, filled with cheap gasoline. Air-conditioning blasts the insides of buildings year-round. Even the country’s drinking water is energy intensive, with nearly all of it coming from desalination plants that burn fossil fuel for the force needed to press ocean water through tiny filters to make it consumable.
In recent years, Qatar has inched forward making climate pledges. At the 2015 Paris climate talks, it did not commit to reducing emissions, but set a goal six years later to cut emissions 25% by 2030. One way would be to use carbon capture and storage at gas production facilities, a much-discussed technology that has yet to be deployed at scale.
Read more: COP27: How will UN climate deal on loss and damage work?
Recently, the country also connected a solar power plant to its electric grid that could power 10% of the nation's energy needs at full capacity.
In Doha, there is a new metro system, more green spaces and parks, and the upscale Msheireb district which was designed to take advantage of natural wind flows.
But it's not clear that Qatar can reach its reduction goal in seven years. At the recent U.N. climate conference in Egypt, Qatar’s environment minister Sheikh Faleh bin Nasser bin Ahmed bin Ali Al Thani said the country was “working to translate these ambitions to facts.”
The ministry of environment and climate change did not respond to multiple requests from The Associated Press for comment on its emissions reduction plan.
In the past, it has said that one key effort will be to diversify Qatar's economy.
Many observers say hosting the World Cup is part of branching out from oil and gas to become an entertainment and events destination. But to hold the event, Qatar built enormous amounts of infrastructure over a 12-year period — with a massive carbon footprint, despite its claims otherwise.
“They can’t diversify without spending money,” said Elgendy. "And that money will come from oil and gas. It’s a bit of a conundrum.”
Read more: Qatar World Cup: Biggest party or scam in the world?
GLOBAL DEMAND FOR GAS
Qatari officials and some academics argue that exporting liquefied natural gas to the world can help the transition to clean energy because the fossil fuel is less polluting than oil and coal. That view is increasingly unsupported by science as the extent of leaks from natural gas infrastructure becomes clear. Leaking natural gas is far more harmful for the climate than carbon dioxide, ton for ton.
Earlier this year, state-owned gas giant Qatar Energy joined an industry-led pledge to reduce nearly all methane emissions from operations by 2030. Methane is the the principal constituent of natural gas.
But a real turn away from fossil fuels has yet to begin here.
After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s race to replace gas from that country left Qatar — among the world’s top natural gas producers and exporters — in pole position to benefit.
Qatar inked new deals with several energy companies, including a recent 27-year agreement to provide liquefied natural gas to Chinese oil and gas company Sinopec.
“Since the war in Ukraine, everyone is talking to the Qataris now to see if they can get that gas,” Elgendy said.
Climate Change: UN, Bangladesh to strengthen cooperation
Bangladesh and the United Nations (UN) on Sunday discussed ways to further strengthen the national efforts of adaptation to and mitigation of the adverse effects of climate change, specially in the context of the recently concluded COP27 in Egypt.
UN Resident Coordinator (UNRC) in Bangladesh Gwyn Lewis met State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and discussed the issues of mutual interest.
The UNRC briefed the State Minister about her recent visit to Khagrachari and Rangamati districts of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, including on various projects the UN has undertaken there for socio-economic development.
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She also sought Bangladesh's cooperation and support in making the upcoming 5th United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5) to be held in Doha, Qatar in March 2023.
They also discussed the humanitarian response for the Rohingyas, including on launching the Joint Response Plan (JRP) next year.