Man Who Planted 50,000 Trees

Abdus Samad Sheikh, 60, cannot sleep peacefully at night if he doesn't plant a tree every day.

G77 Reiterates Need to Protect Oceans & Marine Eco-Systems

The Group of 77, joined by China, has reiterated its firm commitment to support the implementation of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 which calls for the conservation and sustainable use of oceans, seas and marine resources.

Will the World Bank Eat Humble Pie?

It was once a familiar refrain amongst the restaurant-goers in Dhaka that even if one didn'teat or drink anything in a restaurant, one could still end up paying twelve annas for breaking a drinking glass. That saying embodied concerns over the costliness of eating out and its incidental hazards, but eventually acquired a deeper meaning of life. It implies a Kafkaesque helplessness when one has to pay for something without partaking in any of its pleasures. Almost five years later, the Padma Bridge scandal looks like a throwback to that disturbing despair. Some people may have paid the price without doing anything significantly wrong.

Terror Forever

As the Soviet Union disintegrated in front of his very eyes, its last leader Mikhail Gorbachev uttered quite possibly the most prescient words of his entire political life: the demise of global communism would deprive the United States of its most visible enemy, the artefact justifying its imperialist adventures around the world. Gorbachev understood that Washington would have to devise a new ideological ‘other’ to retain a mandate to intervene whenever and wherever it wanted.

Unleashing the Power of the Private Sector

Over the next two to three decades, there are two major overarching trends that Bangladesh will have to deal with, and therefore have to plan for as well. The first trend is a positive one, which is our desire, and indeed commitment, to graduating out of Least Developed Country (LDC) status within less than a decade. The second, more negative trend, is to tackle the adverse impacts of climate change that will occur along the way.

Choosing to Breathe Clean Air

Karachi's air is more polluted than Beijing. Think about it. All the clues have been there for many years — my mother-in-law constantly on oxygen or using an inhaler in Karachi, my children using inhalers or taking anti-allergy tablets. But as a scientist, my light bulb moment only happened when I saw a graph in the International Energy Agency (IEA)’s Global Outlook report for 2016, which showed Karachi next to Beijing, but higher on the pollution scale. The IEA’s report was on air pollution because, as the report’s foreword notes, “energy production and use is the most important source of air pollution coming from human activity.” I cannot get that graph out of my head.

Celebrated Iraqi Musician Naseer Shamma Named UNESCO Artist for Peace

Irina Bokova, the Director-General of UNESCO, will name Iraqi composer and oud virtuoso Naseer Shamma as a UNESCO Artist for Peace in a ceremony at UNESCO Headquarters on 23 February (6.30 pm).

Can Bangladesh Become an Economic Powerhouse?

According to Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Bangladesh has the potential to become the world's 23rd largest economy by 2050. In a report released earlier this month, PwC also predicted Bangladesh would be the 28th biggest economy by 2030 in terms of its Gross Domestic Product calculated at Purchasing Power Parity. This may not seem like a big deal given that Bangladesh already has the 31st largest economy in the world in terms of total GDP; however, thinking along that line may be misleading given the bigger picture.

Corruption Kills

Preparing for earthquakes should go beyond first aid preparation. Most of the time schools, companies and government offices equip employees, workers, and students the basic knowledge of stop, drop, cover, hold, and then evacuate to open spaces, as protocols in the event of an earthquake. As an extra preparation, like in our offices at Palafox Associates and Palafox Architecture, all of our employees are equipped with emergency kits that have a whistle, flashlight, bottle of water, compass, first aid kit, and multi-function portable tools. Identified members of the company are trained to do first aid, rappelling, and coordination for emergencies. But at the end of the day, these are things that we hope will not be necessary because preparation goes beyond first-aid reactionary measures.

Fear of Education

There are two prevailing mindsets that could account for the staggered growth of female education in Pakistan: that which thinks of education as an asset, and the other which views it as a threat. The crux of the issue of slow-to-improve gender disparity in our education system is that Pakistanis appear to have both mindsets at the same time.

The High Price of the World Bank’s Blunder

It was the country's largest infrastructure project - that is up to that point of time in 2011, costing USD 2.9 billion. It was also the World Bank's largest loan to the tune of USD 1.2 billion. Asian Development Bank, JICA and Islamic Development Bank also joined hands to fund the project that would be so vital for Bangladesh's development, especially for the 30 million people living in the disadvantaged south for whom the River Padma stood as a solid barrier towards national integration.

The Government Needs to Be Constructive Rather than Combative

Is the essentially combative tone adopted by the Government to the Juan Mendez report finding that a “culture of torture” is still being practised in Sri Lanka quite wise, one might ask? Of course, we live in an age where, confounding his own advisors and despite solid evidence to the contrary, the President of the United States is on record stating bombastically that ‘torture works’ as an interrogation method.

Growth & Job Generation

Pakistan needs to generate millions of new jobs a year if it wants to absorb the young people who are currently looking to join the workforce. And it will need to continue creating an even larger number of new jobs every year, for at least a couple of decades, since we are still going through a demographic transition and are adding more young people to the population than there are people exiting the workforce. Female participation rates in the labour force continue to be quite low. If more women were to come into the workforce as they should, we will need even more jobs.

Redistribute or Not?

The subject of income inequality, once pushed to the margins of economics by more attractive offerings such as economic growth, has experienced a spectacular turnaround.

What the Rest of the World Can Do

Although President Trump has only been in office for less than a month, it is already becoming clear how he intends to carry out implementing his campaign pledges and who he is appointing in his cabinet. It is therefore possible to assess some likely actions and policies on climate change based on his campaign statements and also some of his advisers' statements and most importantly from his own Twitter statements.