Md. Tahmid Zami

With 2024 set to become the hottest year on record, growing climate extremes mean some places around the world will become uninhabitable and that could lead to mass migration. 

Some 26 million people were internally displaced by disasters such as drought or floods last year and if the climate crisis is left unchecked, about 216 million people could be internal climate migrants by 2050, according to the World Bank.

The growing costs of the climate crisis are forcing developing nations to make painful choices, compelling them to pay off debts rather than spend money on crucial services like health and education.

Only 28% of climate finance was provided as grants in 2022 to developing countries recovering from floods or shifting to clean energy, and the rest was channeled as loans, leaving them swamped by overwhelming and pressing external debt.

Bangladesh is embroiled in a dispute with Indian electricity company Adani Power as it struggles to pay the company outstanding bills of at least $650 million.

The country has halved its purchases from Adani's 1,600-megawatt (MW) Godda coal power plant, citing lower seasonal demand, and said it wants to renegotiate the price it pays Adani, which is higher than what other Indian power producers charge.

At the U.N. COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, one issue is dominating proceedings: money.

Countries are tasked with agreeing a new financial goal to help developing nations tackle climate change, a figure U.N. agencies say should reach $1 trillion a year by the end of the decade.

The United Nations climate change conference agreed this week to start disbursing money from a new fund to support developing nations suffering losses from climate change.

The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) broadens the world’s response to climate change from its two main pillars of mitigation and adaptation to also pay for the harm vulnerable nations sustain from increasingly frequent cyclones, droughts and other extreme weather events.

Famed for its Sun Temple dedicated to the sun god, Modhera in Gujarat state became India's first fully solar-powered village in 2022, but a legal case against the plant is still in court as residents seek compensation for losing 50 acres of grazing land.

Modhera's 6 megawatt (MW) solar plant and a linked battery storage system, which provide energy to the village's 6,000 people, were built in 2022 despite opposition from local farmers, who filed a case in the state's highest court in 2020 against its construction.

In the industrial town of Rupganj outside of Bangladesh’s capital, clothing manufacturer Fakir Fashions is using artificial intelligence to automatically pause production and avoid waste when something goes wrong in its knitting operations.

AI technology has also allowed the fashion supplier, which employs about 10,000 workers, to dismiss dozens of human quality inspectors, said managing director Fakir Kamruzzaman Nahid.

Cici Brinces came to Lebanon as a domestic worker 14 years ago, married a Palestinian, had a son, survived leukaemia and was building a new life. Then bombs began falling in Beirut and now she wants to go home to the Philippines.

"I feel that the end is near for me - worse than when I had cancer," said Brinces, 46, who fled her home near the airport two weeks ago and lived on the streets for days before moving into a shelter with her 10-year-old son.

As more extreme rainfall hits South Asia leading to floods that do not recognise national borders, regional countries must work together more to combat the mutual threat, experts said.

Heavy rains led to flash floods and landslides that killed some 200 people in Nepal last month in two days of incessant rains caused by low-pressure in the Bay of Bengal and neighbouring parts of India. In August, a flash flood killed at least 71 near the border of India and Bangladesh.

As the global fashion industry braces for new green supply-chain regulations, clothing makers in low-income countries like Bangladesh expect major international brands to share the burden.

The European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), adopted in July, requires corporations to make their global value chains more sustainable.