The winter in Bangladesh, as in many other Asian countries, has become erratic.  When people in the country’s northern region seek an escape from cold, those who live in Dhaka are in pursuit of an enchanting winter. On Monday, the lowest temperature was 14 degrees Celsius in Dhaka at night and 24 degrees Celsius at daytime and public life was almost normal in the capital. But people in many other parts of the country, mainly in the northern region, experienced the biting cold. READ: Winter in Bangladesh not over yet, another cold wave coming For example, Chuadanga, a northern district, experienced 7 degrees Celsius of temperature, the lowest of the country this year, the same day as a mild cold wave is sweeping different parts of Bangladesh. The chilly weather is disrupting normal life in the district making the poor people the worst sufferers. The unusual cold weather is forcing people to stay indoors, causing sufferings to low-income people, including day-labourers and rickshaw-pullers. Many people were seen crowding stores of warm clothes and quilts to protect themselves from the biting cold. Living in Dhaka will give you another experience.  The middle-class people of Dhaka are in cold-weather gear enjoying the much-sought winter with fancy winter dresses and planning winter trips.   

On a moonless summer night in Hawaii, krill, fish and crabs swirl through a beam of light as two researchers peer into the water above a vibrant reef. Minutes later, like clockwork, they see eggs and sperm from spawning coral drifting past their boat. They scoop up the fishy-smelling blobs and put them in test tubes. In this Darwinian experiment, the scientists are trying to speed up coral’s evolutionary clock to breed “super corals” that can better withstand the impacts of global warming. For the past five years, the researchers have been conducting experiments to prove their theories would work. Now, they're getting ready to plant laboratory-raised corals in the ocean to see how they survive in Nature. “Assisted evolution started out as this kind of crazy idea that you could actually help something change and allow that to survive better because it is changing,” said Kira Hughes, a University of Hawaii researcher and the project's manager. SPEEDING UP NATURE Researchers tested three methods of making corals more resilient: — Selective breeding that carries on desirable traits from parents. — Acclimation that conditions corals to tolerate heat by exposing them to increasing temperatures. — And modifying the algae that give corals essential nutrients. Hughes said the methods all have proven successful in the lab. And while some other scientists worried this is meddling with Nature, Hughes said the rapidly warming planet leaves no other options. “We have to intervene in order to make a change for coral reefs to survive into the future,” she said. When ocean temperatures rise, coral releases its symbiotic algae that supply nutrients and impart its vibrant colors. The coral turns white — a process called bleaching — and can quickly become sick and die. Read:In California, some buy machines that make water out of air For more than a decade, scientists have been observing corals that have survived bleaching, even when others have died on the same reef. So, researchers are focusing on those hardy survivors, hoping to enhance their heat tolerance. And they found selective breeding held the most promise for Hawaii's reefs. “Corals are threatened worldwide by a lot of stressors, but increasing temperatures are probably the most severe,” said Crawford Drury, chief scientist at Hawaii’s Coral Resilience Lab. “And so that’s what our focus is on, working with parents that are really thermally tolerant.” A NOVEL IDEA In 2015, Ruth Gates, who launched the resilience lab, and Madeleine van Oppen of the Australian Institute of Marine Science published a paper on assisted evolution during one of the world's worst bleaching events. The scientists proposed bringing corals into a lab to help them evolve into more heat-tolerant animals. And the idea attracted Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who funded the first phase of research and whose foundation still supports the program. “We’ve given (coral) experiences that we think are going to raise their ability to survive,” Gates told The Associated Press in a 2015 interview. Gates, who died of brain cancer in 2018, also said she wanted people to know how “intimately reef health is intertwined with human health.” Coral reefs, often called the rainforests of the sea, provide food for humans and marine animals, shoreline protection for coastal communities, jobs for tourist economies and even medicine to treat illnesses such as cancer, arthritis and Alzheimers disease. A recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other research organizations concluded bleaching events are the biggest threat to the world's coral reefs. Scientists found that between 2009 and 2018, the world lost about 14% of its coral. Assisted evolution was not widely accepted when first proposed. Van Oppen said there were concerns about losing genetic diversity and critics who said the scientists were “playing gods” by tampering with the reef. “Well, you know, (humans) have already intervened with the reef for very long periods of time,” van Oppen said. “All we’re trying to do is to repair the damage.” Rather than editing genes or creating anything unnatural, researchers are just nudging what could already happen in the ocean, she said. “We are really focusing first on as local a scale as possible to try and maintain and enhance what is already there." Read:Oldest human footprints in North America found in New Mexico MILLIONS OF YEARS IN THE MAKING Still, there are lingering questions. “We have discovered lots of reasons why corals don’t bleach," said Steve Palumbi, a marine biologist and professor at Stanford University. “Just because you find a coral that isn’t bleaching in the field or in the lab doesn’t mean it’s permanently heat tolerant.” Corals have been on Earth for about 250 million years and their genetic code is not fully understood. “This is not the first time any coral on the entire planet has ever been exposed to heat,” Palumbi said. “So the fact that all corals are not heat resistant tells you ... that there’s some disadvantage to it. And if there weren’t a disadvantage, they’d all be heat resistant.” But Palumbi thinks the assisted evolution work has a valuable place in coral management plans because “reefs all over the world are in desperate, desperate, desperate trouble.” The project has gained broad support and spurred research around the world. Scientists in the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany and elsewhere are doing their own coral resilience work. The U.S. government also backs the effort. Assisted evolution "is really impressive and very consistent with a study that we conducted with the National Academies of Sciences,” said Jennifer Koss, the director of NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program. “We asked them to gather all the most recent cutting-edge science that was really centered on innovative interventions in coral reef management,” Koss said. “And certainly, this assisted gene flow fits right in.” MAJOR HURDLES There are still serious challenges. Scalability is one. Getting lab-bred corals out into the ocean and having them survive will be hard, especially since reintroduction has to happen on a local level to avoid bringing detrimental biological material from one region to another. James Guest, a coral ecologist in the United Kingdom, leads a project to show selectively bred corals not only survive longer in warmer water, but can also be successfully reintroduced on a large scale. “It’s great if we can do all this stuff in the lab, but we have to show that we can get very large numbers of them out onto the reef in a cost-effective way,” Guest said. Scientists are testing delivery methods, such as using ships to pump young corals into the ocean and deploying small underwater robots to plant coral. No one is proposing assisted evolution alone will save the world’s reefs. The idea is part of a suite of measures – with proposals ranging from creating shades for coral to pumping cooler deep-ocean water onto reefs that get too warm. The advantage of planting stronger corals is that after a generation or two, they should spread their traits naturally, without much human intervention. Over the next several years, the Hawaii scientists will place selectively bred coral back into Kaneohe Bay and observe their behavior. Van Oppen and her colleagues have already put some corals with modified symbiotic algae back on the Great Barrier Reef. With the world's oceans continuing to warm, scientists say they are up against the clock to save reefs. “All the work we are going to do here,” said Hawaii's Drury, “is not going to make a difference if we don’t wind up addressing climate change on a global, systematic scale. “So really, what we’re trying to do is buy time.”

Life is extremely precarious for the residents of Sutarkhali, Tildanga, Banishanta, Bajua, Laudob, Kamarkhola, and Dakope unions – living on the edge of the rivers Shibsa, Pasur, Dhaki, Bhadra, Chunkuri in Khulna. Strong fears of unrest and eviction are always breathing down their neck. Without warning, tidal floods can rise and surge over the place they call home, leaving devastation in their wake. It is a small zone of calm amid chaos, ferocious rains and wanton destruction. Here people follow the whims of the weather like one would not believe. Figuring out how to get to safety if a storm is coming is always on their mind. Sixty-one-year-old Chhayra Begum from Dakope lives next to the River Chunkuri. She has no son and married off her two daughters. Read:Long-cherished Chandpur-Sylhet intercity train still a dream The husbandless Chhayra lives in a nipa palm thatched house – partly swallowed by the river – and does not have a private toilet. She has to go to her neighbour's house or to the riverside to answer the call of nature. The sexagenarian uses a bamboo bridge to return home. She catches fish from the river with hooks to eke out a living. Chhayra earns Tk80 to Tk100 from selling the catch of the day in the Dakope Bazaar which is barely enough to get by. She has to walk one mile every day to fetch drinking water from the filter set up next to the pond of sadar upazila. Chhayra draws water from the river for cooking and uses alum as a purifier.

The year was 2018, when Mahbub Sumon decided to do his bit for the environment. Along with his three friends, this young climate activist from Bangladesh founded Shalbrikhkho, a Bangladeshi startup that aims at helping people reuse, reduce and recycle daily-use products. Two of Mahbub's projects -- BONKAGOJ and plastic from potatoes (POLKA) -- have already caught the attention of thousands across social media platforms. Mahbub opened up about his work in an interview with UNB. Q. What motivated you to work on renewable energy and eco-friendly alternatives? While doing some basic research on the alternative power sector and renewable energy prospects, I figured out climate change as the biggest crisis for the human race. For environmental sustainability, I soon started working on a couple of ideas like natural agriculture for cities and alternative sources of energy. Soon I focussed on developing eco-friendly alternatives to various plastic products. I experimented with permaculture using BONKAGOJ and succeeded. The principle was -- since paper is made from trees, we can use that paper to grow a tree again. I also developed POLKA (plastics from potatoes) as an alternative to polyethene. I am also experimenting with different innovative projects in the renewable energy sector and alternative eco-friendly lifestyle changes. Read Jute: The Greenest Alternative to Plastic Bags Q. What is BONKAGOJ? BONKAGOJ, a biodegradable product, is made from recycled paper and embedded with different plant seeds. It's a handmade paper that can be used like any other ordinary paper. But after its use, if anyone puts the paper in a soggy pot, a flower garden will sprout from it within weeks. Worldwide billions of trees are chopped down every year, many for producing paper. Single-use paper and paper products pollute cities. So, I harped on the idea of turning waste papers into a flower garden to save the environment. Read BUILD explores producing paper pulp from whole jute plant

On Saturday, 27 March at 8:30 p.m. local time, Earth Hour will unite individuals, businesses and leaders from all over the world to shine a spotlight on the health of the planet, raising awareness on the importance of nature and inspiring action for a brighter future for nature and people. With COVID-19 safety regulations continuing in several parts of the world, many countries will be celebrating Earth Hour online, mobilising millions of people from across the globe to speak up for nature. As the lights dim in homes and cities, Earth Hour will bring people together to put a virtual spotlight on our planet and the role people can play in global efforts for nature. Also read: States urged to take advantage of lifetime chance to protect environment With mounting evidence establishing a close link between nature's destruction and rising incidences of infectious disease outbreaks like COVID-19, Earth Hour will be an unmissable opportunity to raise awareness about the importance of nature, in a year when leaders will take key decisions on nature, climate change and sustainable development. ''Whether it is a decline in pollinators, fewer fish in the ocean and rivers, disappearing forests or the wider loss of biodiversity, the evidence is mounting that nature is in free fall. And this is because of the way we live our lives and run our economies. Protecting nature is our moral responsibility but losing it also increases our vulnerability to pandemics, accelerates climate change, and threatens our food security," said Marco Lambertini, Director General, WWF International. "We must stop taking nature for granted, respect its intrinsic value, and - importantly - value the crucial services it provides to our health, wellbeing and economy. We need to unite and take urgent action now to set nature on the path to recovery and secure a nature-positive world, while supporting climate action. By acting for nature, we can all create a healthier, fairer and more sustainable world." Also read:  UN chief calls for end to war with nature Renowned public figures, celebrities, youth organisations and businesses from across the globe will be supporting Earth Hour to draw attention to the nature and climate crises. Pledging his support for Earth Hour, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres emphasized in a video message that now is the time to be bold and ambitious, and show the world we are determined to protect the one home we all share. In recognition of the critical role young people will play in creating a more sustainable world, many global youth groups including Fridays For Future, AIESEC, United Nations Global Youth Biodiversity Network, Global Scouts, YMCA, and Global Youth Action Team will be participating in Earth Hour calling for a safer, healthier future for all. Businesses and governments worldwide have a key role to play in building a healthy, sustainable future – and planet – for all. This Earth Hour, Business for Nature, a global coalition that brings together business and conservation organizations, will be calling on governments to urgently adopt policies for reversing nature loss by the end of the decade. Eva Zabey, Executive Director, Business for Nature, said: "COVID-19 has given us a stark warning of the risks, vulnerabilities and inequalities of our interconnected systems – and what’s at stake for everyone if we cannot mobilize action. Leading companies recognize they need to act now to both cut greenhouse gas emissions and reverse nature loss by 2030. Earth Hour is taking place during a critical year, when world leaders are due to agree an ambitious global agreement on nature. Let us use this symbolic moment to think about how we work together - across society, business and government - to change our course towards a nature-positive, net-zero and equitable future." Also read: Environment, health at risk for wildlife crime: UN report Many iconic landmarks including the Eiffel Tower, Tokyo Skytree, Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, ​the Colosseum in Rome, Rova of Antananarivo in Madagascar, ​UAP Old Mutual Tower in Nairobi, Sydney Opera House, Niagara Falls, Taipei 101 and Gardens by the Bay in Singapore will be switching off their lights in a symbolic gesture of support on the night of Earth Hour. This year is set to be another important moment for the Earth Hour movement, with more than 140 countries and territories coming together to highlight and invite action on the environmental issues most relevant to them.

Nations must start weighing up the cost of economic profit against damage to the environment if they are to have a chance at a sustainable future, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Tuesday.

Humans are making Earth a broken and increasingly unlivable planet through climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. So the world must make dramatic changes to society, economics and daily life, a new United Nations report says.

Global leaders including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina launched "Leaders' Pledge for Nature: United to Reverse Biodiversity Loss by 2030 for Sustainable Development" on Monday demonstrating their commitment for nature, biodiversity and global goals.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all to care for nature saying nature is sending a clear message to all.   "To care for humanity, we must care for nature," said the UN chief in a message on World Environment Day that falls on Friday.    The UN chief said they need entire global community to change course. "Let’s rethink what we buy and use."   He said they are harming the natural world – to their own detriment.   The UN chief said habitat degradation and biodiversity loss are accelerating. "Climate disruption is getting worse."   Guterres said fires, floods, droughts and superstorms are more frequent and damaging.   Oceans are heating and acidifying, destroying coral ecosystems, he said.     "And now, a new coronavirus is raging, undermining health and livelihoods," the UN chief said.    He urged all to adopt sustainable habits, farming and business models, safeguard remaining wild spaces and wildlife.    "And commit to a green and resilient future," said Guterres.   He said as they work to build back better, "let’s put nature where it belongs -- at the heart of our decision making."   "On this World Environment Day, it’s time for nature," said Guterres.    

Dhaka, known as one of the unhealthy cities in the world because of several types of environmental pollution, has to suffer in almost every election- thanks to the advertisements usage in the election campaigns of the candidates. A good load of posters and banners cover the whole cityscape and after the ending of these elections, both the city corporations suffer to clean up these huge messes.