Looking Forward
Looking forward at the national level, the world is now looking at Bangladesh as a pioneer in tackling climate change and we can indeed become an example for other countries. The positive aspect is that there is a very high degree of awareness of the climate change problem amongst all stakeholders and there is also very strong bi-partisan political support from all the political parties. Hence the focus on climate change should be the same regardless of which political party is in power. However, on the negative side the difficult political circumstances make progress in tackling climate change difficult, as with everything else. The other negative issue to keep in mind is that it does not take much time to lose one's reputation if something does go wrong. Hence, it is important that we have some good monitoring and evaluation systems put in place to keep track of the country's climate change activities.At the international level in addition to those important events mentioned above, the main future event is the twenty-first conference of parties (COP21) to be held in Paris, France in December 2015, where the new treaty is supposed to be formalised. There will be two milestone events before then, namely, COP20 in Lima, Peru in December 2014 and the Climate Summit called by the United Nations Secretary General Mr. Ban Ki-moon in September 2014 on the margins of the UN General Assembly.