How the most vulnerable countries are leading the world to tackle climate change

Sustainability Science Centre is proud to present a sustainability lecture on 31 October 2016 by Dr. Saleemul Huq, from International Institute for Environment and Development, Bangladesh. He will talk on how the most vulnerable countries are leading the world to tackle climate change.

Katherine Richardson, Professor in Biological Oceanography, Leader of Sustainability Science Centre, University of Copenhagen, will moderate the talk.

The talk will tell the story of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC ) and Paris Agreement focusing on the inclusion of the 1.5 Degrees long term temperature goal. It will then show how many of the poorest and most vulnerable countries, such as Bangladesh, are leading the world on both adaptation as well as mitigation to climate change.

Dr. Saleemul Huq is the Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) at Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB), a Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London and a past Director of the Climate Change Programme at the institute. He has worked extensively in the inter-linkages between climate change (both mitigation as well as adaptation) and sustainable development, from the perspective of the developing countries, with special emphasis on least developed countries (LDCs). He has published numerous articles in scientific and popular journals, was a lead author of the chapter on Adaptation and Sustainable Development in the third assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and  was one of the coordinating lead authors of ‘Inter-relationships between adaptation and mitigation’ in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (2007).

His areas of research and expertise include capacity strengthening of civil society in the LDCs for adaptation to climate change, capacity strengthening of climate change negotiators, enhancing the sustainable development benefits of the clean development mechanism (CDM), improving research on adaptation to climate change in developing countries and community based adaptation.

Dr. Huq holds a PhD from Imperial College, London, United Kingdom in plant sciences. His teaching experiences include Imperial College, the University of Dhaka and United Nations University - Environment and Human Security. He was the founder and continues to be a chairman of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a leading scientific research and policy institute in Bangladesh in the field of environment and development.