Bangladesh has emerged as the leading voice of climate change activism in the Global South in recent years. The country has shown resilience, determination and an unapologetic stance in the pursuit of climate justice.

As a low-lying, densely populated country, Bangladesh finds itself on the frontline of climate change impacts, grappling with rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and the displacement of vulnerable communities. Currently, the country is reeling from extreme flooding which has displaced half a million people and killed at least 23.

Despite contributing minimally to the carbon emissions responsible for these changes, Bangladesh still holds the developed world accountable for its part in accelerating climate change. However, Bangladesh also must fight to bring the Global South into climate action. The advocacy Bangladesh demonstrates for climate action and justice must remain at the forefront of the global stage.

Bangladesh fights for climate justice within its own borders

Bangladesh, often described as one of the most climate-vulnerable countries, has been dealing with the severe consequences of climate change for decades. Geography and socio-economic conditions make it uniquely susceptible to the impacts of global warming. Rising sea levels pose an existential threat to coastal communities, and extreme weather events such as cyclones and floods disrupt livelihoods. According to the World Bank’s Country and Climate Development Report, tropical cyclones cost Bangladesh about $1 billion annually on average. The country could see as many as 13.3 million people displaced by 2050 due to climate change. Its GDP could fall by as much as 9% in case of severe flooding. 

In the face of these challenges, Bangladesh displays an action-centered attitude in dealing with climate change. The World Bank calls it “the emerging hot spot” where climate threats and action meet. Its initiatives have resulted in impressive climate adaptation ventures, including the construction of the world’s largest multi-storied social housing project in Coxs Bazar, which will rehabilitate 4,400 families displaced by climate change. In mitigation, Bangladesh has become one of the world leaders in Solar House Systems, with 6 million households using solar photovoltaic systems.

Bangladesh has not stopped at the social level. It has also worked towards boosting economic action to mitigate climate damage. Bangladesh was one of the first developing countries to establish a coordinated action plan in 2009. Till now, its climate policy deck includes the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Act, the Delta Plan 2100, and the Mujib Climate Prosperity Plan. Each policy focuses on directing funds towards the prevention of climate damage.

The country has also set up a Climate Change Trust Fund, the first of its kind, allocating $300 million from domestic resources between 2009 and 2012. In 2014, the country adopted the Climate Fiscal Framework to create climate-inclusive public financial management. Bangladesh also introduced a National Sustainable Development Strategy to align economic development with climate priorities further. Bangladesh put forward a target to generate 5% of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2015 and 10% by 2020.

However, Bangladesh has failed to meet either of these targets. It continues to generate most of its electricity from fossil fuels. The reliance on natural gas and coal puts Bangladesh at risk of power crises. This should not, however, be a sign of lax climate advocacy. Bangladesh continues to fight for justice both within its borders and on the regional stage. 

The regional stage must join Bangladesh in advocating for climate justice

Pursuing climate justice also includes Bangladesh’s proactive advocacy of raising awareness about the disproportionate impact of climate change on vulnerable nations. In the latest Munich security conference, this issue of regional disparities in renewable energy investment was discussed broadly. Till now, the funding discrimination in the Global South is glaring—mostly circulating in China and some high- and middle-income economies, with India and Indonesia gaining recent attention due to the steep rise in emissions. But poorer nations in the south are still largely off the radar.

During the pandemic, Bangladesh launched the South Asian regional office for the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) in Dhaka in September 2020. The GCA Bangladesh office will promote indigenous nature-based sustainable solutions and innovative adaptation measures with the regional countries.

In December 2022, Bangladesh even became a party to the case by an international organization of small island states, known as the Commission of Small Island States (COSIS). COSIS sought an advisory opinion, the first request of its kind, on the states’ obligations regarding climate change at ICJ. Bangladesh submitted a written statement explaining the need for international law regarding climate change.

The failure of advanced economies, the major contributors to climate change, to mobilize investments in renewables for low-income countries is a critical discussion that must be kept alive for opportunities for global green growth. While Bangladesh should continue to be a vocal party to this conversation regarding other low-income countries, it too must advocate for itself. Its measures are not adequate to deal with its climate urgencies forever, especially considering the pressure of financing climate actions on its emerging economy. The country could require an estimated $26.5 billion to meet its goal of generating 40% of electricity from renewables by 2041. 

Bangladesh must be vigilant in securing climate finance and technology from the public and private sectors at future COPs, or it risks losing decades of economic gains to climate change during the crucial period of its development. Thus the country has emerged as a vocal proponent for the need for collective global responsibility in addressing climate change.

The Global South cannot face climate change alone

The hallmark of Bangladesh’s climate awareness and advocacy is that it has played a crucial role in shaping the discourse around loss and damage at international climate negotiations. Bangladesh has consistently called for developed nations to take decisive actions in reducing their carbon footprints. 

Bangladesh calls for such nations to provide financial and technological support to developing countries. The failure of advanced economies, the major contributors to climate change, to mobilize investments in renewables for low-income countries is a critical discussion that must be kept alive for opportunities for global green growth. 

 Bangladesh has been a member of essential bodies set up by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) over the years, such as the Adaptation Fund Board and the Green Climate Fund Board. It also plays a significant role in international climate diplomacy, having organized and led the Least Developed Countries negotiating bloc in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations since the bloc’s inception. The country’s advocacy has contributed to establishing the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, which promotes dialogue around climate change effects. Bangladesh’s global advocacy signals a step forward in recognizing and addressing the impacts beyond action. 

The burden of climate change disproportionately falls on those who have contributed the least to its causes. Recognizing the challenges the Global South faces is crucial for fostering a fair and inclusive response to the climate crisis. The COP28 Loss and Damage Fund has been the right direction to take in this regard. The global community must acknowledge and support the efforts of nations like Bangladesh to pursue climate justice. Climate justice is not a charity but a shared responsibility for a more equitable and sustainable future for all.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

A few years ago, the UK’s National Theatre staged an exceptionally moving Christmas show. Among the characters were a pregnant woman and her partner, searching for a place to rest. So far, so seasonal. But Love, by Alexander Zeldin, wasn’t set in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago — it took place in a temporary accommodation hostel in modern Britain.

One of three plays — The Inequalities trilogy — focusing on those sorely affected by austerity, the government’s programme for cutting public spending in the 2010s, Love used painstaking naturalism to envelop the audience in the world of the drama. Key to it were the quiet dignity and compassion Zeldin accorded his characters. The ending, in which a middle-aged man tenderly washed his elderly mother’s hair in the communal kitchen sink, would have made a concrete slab weep.

Now Zeldin is back at the National Theatre with a very different project — at least on the surface of it. The Other Place comes with the subtitle After Antigone, so you might expect an updating of Sophocles’s great tragedy. But Zeldin, 39, has barely arrived in a small room in the theatre before he’s emphasising that that is not the case: there’s no Theban princess — or modern equivalent — facing down her royal uncle over the burial of her disgraced brother. Instead, he has gone back to what he feels is the engine of the original and reworked it in a contemporary domestic setting.

“Antigone is a play about the aftermath,” he says. “It’s not about someone resisting arrest or something: it’s [about] two forms of grief.” In his version, a man who was left looking after his two nieces following his brother’s suicide has, 10 years later, decided to remodel the house, move his new wife and child in and scatter his brother’s ashes — thereby going back on his promise to his niece, Annie. That and Annie’s fragile state prompt a family crisis. “So it’s a modern tragedy around one person wanting to erase the past and one person wanting to preserve it,” says the playwright. “We have radically different ways of dealing with grief.”

Zeldin is not the only writer and director grappling with Sophocles this winter. London is about to embrace two high-profile productions of Oedipus, one staged by Robert Icke, one by Matthew Warchus and Hofesh Shechter, while Hollywood star Brie Larson will play Elektra in January. For Zeldin, the tragedian throws down a gauntlet to a modern writer.

“The challenge of a contemporary tragedy is really exciting for a playwright,” he says. “Antigone takes place in less than 24 hours: it’s one action, one place. It’s a real test to write something that has the mechanism of inevitability . . . There are situations in life when there is no resolution possible and acknowledging that has a great value.”

Zeldin, a warm, friendly presence, looks tired but wired after the week’s rehearsals. He leans across the table, intent on clarity, bringing the same restless honesty to the conversation as he does to his work. His new play is funny, he says — “I like laughing a lot in theatre” — but it is also an attempt to face up to difficult questions without flinching.

Is theatre something that can get into the marrow of our world and make stories out of it?

“At the centre of the play is somebody who has been in crisis for a long time,” he says. “The question that is central to it, and to our time, is: what to do in the face of the suffering of others? Because we know about suffering everywhere. It’s very hard to live with. But that’s where theatre has a space. It can bring us into something that we don’t normally see and that’s essential to live — to really live.”

His 2023 play The Confessions turned that eye on his own family, inspired by the experiences of his Australian mother and her generation. But it also touched on Zeldin’s own childhood trauma: he lost his father, a Russian-Jewish refugee, when he was 15. In essence, it was that tragedy that propelled him towards theatre.

“When someone dies you want to live,” he says. “So I lived hard. I had a bit of a rough time as a teenager. Theatre for me was a space where it was possible to say anything. And it still is . . . That’s the purpose of art — to make the unsayable sayable. And inside that it’s an act of kindness, it’s a moral act. We need it.”

Still in his teens, he took a production to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it received the accolade of “worst play of the year” from one critic. “It was a real badge of honour,” he grins. But where many might have slunk off, defeated, Zeldin was hooked. He knew he had found something in which he really believed. “I realised theatre was a way of cutting through the bullshit and getting at what is essential.”

That urge to bottle truth came out in his Inequalities trilogy, which he began working on in his mid-twenties. His own time doing temp jobs left him determined to find a way to honour onstage the experiences of people often ignored. The first of that trilogy, Beyond Caring, focused on factory cleaners on zero-hours contracts.

“The question was whether you can carve a story out of just life,” he says. “Is theatre something that can get into the marrow of our world and make stories out of it? I’m interested in empathy. I’m interested in dignity.”

After university, Zeldin travelled extensively, seeking out different ways of making theatre. He worked with the great director Peter Brook in Paris, where he still lives (though he’s considering moving back to the UK), and in 2019 set up the A Zeldin company, partly with the intention of touring. An outward looking theatre culture is “very valuable” he suggests.

Fourteen years after falling in love with the stage, he remains besotted. But, in a sense, it’s a tough love. “I always ask myself the question, why theatre? What do people need to see? What’s useful?” he says. “I remember hearing a Greek director say, ‘I want this play to travel in you.’ I love that.”

September 27-November 9, nationaltheatre.org.uk

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We all value, or claim to value, ideas. We want them in our movies, our books, our music; otherwise, the thinking goes, we’re just ingesting empty calories. But not all ideas are created equal. Sometimes they’re floating too freely within the material to be tethered to any meaningful interpretation; other times they’re so ploddingly instructive that we feel pummeled. The ideas embedded in A Different Man, written and directed by Aaron Schimberg, hover somewhere in the milky middle between being too amorphous and too obvious, though by the end, you will most certainly have gotten the point. Yet this is a movie in which the performers make all the difference—the actors embody the ideas so wholly that the messages layered into the script are just superfluous embroidery. It’s worth seeing A Different Man for the two performances at its heart, given by Adam Pearson and Sebastian Stan.

Stan, at first wearing prosthetic makeup, plays Edward, a struggling actor whose employment consists solely of the occasional workplace-training video. Edward has a rare genetic condition known as Neurofibromatosis, which causes tumors to grow on the skin and in other parts of the body. It affects his facial appearance and his speech, and marks him as “different.” We see one of the clumsy videos in which he’s featured, apparently enacting some kind of by-the-water-cooler fainting spell; his co-workers in the video ostensibly treat him as an individual by condescending to him—exactly the sort of behavior these videos ought to be working against. But in the movie, this video handily makes an important point: this is the sort of behavior Edward has to field every day. No wonder he seems to be shuffling through life, deferential to others almost to the point of obliterating himself. If he can make himself invisible, he won’t have to suffer the cruelty of other humans, both those who mean harm and those who mean well.

Edward, who lives in a dismal apartment somewhere in New York (both this flat and this New York somewhat resemble Ari Aster’s vision in Beau Is Afraid), has a new and very attractive neighbor, Renate Reinsve’s Ingrid. She startles visibly when she first sees him; then she offers friendship, and possibly something more. She’s an aspiring playwright, and Edward talks to her, glumly, about his nearly nonexistent acting career. Her beauty and her brightness seem to make him feel more morose than usual. He’s used to living his life in comparison to others, and it brings him nothing but suffering.

Then he’s offered a chance to try an experimental facial reconstruction treatment. It works! His old face gradually peels away—the process resembles the stretching of melted mozzarella, or maybe a time-lapse rendering of one of Francis Bacon’s screaming popes—revealing a very handsome young man beneath. Now Edward can finally find out how the rest of the world lives. He becomes a high-flying real estate honcho, as well as, of course, a success with the ladies. Then Ingrid comes back into his life, in a roundabout way—she of course doesn’t recognize him. And he meets another individual who somewhat resembles the man he used to be, but only physically. Oswald (Adam Pearson) is a jaunty Brit who favors pocket squares and bright, patterned shirts. He’s a charmer—everyone loves him, especially women. In him, Edward sees the man he, with his old face, might have been. Oswald represents both a rebuke and a missed opportunity.

And when he appears, the film suddenly levitates. Schimberg has worked with Pearson before, in his 2019 film Chained for Life. (Moviegoers might also know the actor from his appearance in Jonathan Glazer’s haunting parable of loneliness Under the Skin.) Schimberg was so inspired by Pearson’s confidence and charm that he wrote the part of Oswald specifically for him, and the moment he shows up, a light turns on: Edward, in his old persona, has invited our pity, and probably gotten it. Oswald brushes right past the idea of pity—we’re so drawn to him that we can’t even imagine feeling it.

That right there is a lot for a movie, and for two actors, to carry. Stan is terrific as the eternally surly Edward: his handsome pout, post-transformation, isn’t something that gives us pleasure. If anything, it makes us wish we could have the old Edward back, who at least had some shambling charm. And Pearson is off the charts as Oswald: he swaggers through the movie like its dazzling, unofficial mayor, meeting and greeting and encouraging openness, rather than closure, in the world around him. The dynamic between Oswald and Edward is rich territory by itself. The problem is that Schimberg keeps adding layers of plot to drive his points home, instead of just stepping back to let his characters do their thing. The movie sends us home with a message—let’s say it’s something along the lines of “Think hard about how you view others who are different”—even as the actors open out another way of thinking: Since we’re all individuals anyway, why see differences as differences at all? That’s an idea that goes beyond our concept of what an “idea” even is. It’s a basic tenet of living—or at least it ought to be.

The winds of change blowing through the financial world mean more of us feel under pressure to make big money decisions — yet many feel ill-equipped to make the right choices.

Warnings of painful tax rises in October’s Budget have prompted readers to give away inheritances early, sell shares and property and, depending on their age, pay in or withdraw large sums from their pensions. But have we done the right thing? Added to this is the uncertainty of how our investments might perform in a turning interest rate cycle, what size of cash buffer to hold and when the optimum time to remortgage might be.

Decisions, decisions! So, when I saw that HSBC had researched how more than 17,000 people in 12 countries went about making different calls with their cash, I was intrigued to learn more.

The study found the best financial decisions involved mindset and method. Having optimism about the outcome, an openness to change and the opportunities this might bring, while acknowledging that things might not go to plan was the optimal mindset, researchers concluded. So, a bit different from the Budget-induced panic of recent months.

As for the process, your head, heart and network are all important, the study found. Planning, research and hard-headed analysis of the facts are obviously key. It may be awkward, but talking about potential decisions with a wider network of people — including those who might disagree with us — was vital. And while our emotions should not be the sole guide of financial decisions, imagining how we’d feel if we did or didn’t make a certain decision had particular value.

If you’re grappling with a decision of your own, the researchers told me that a big predictor of having the confidence to act is if your plans are adaptable: I’ve weighed up the risks, I think this is the best option but, if X happens, I’ll do Y.

What I noticed was that there was nothing different that you or I could see in the [good or bad] classes of decision

It all sounds so easy. However, the current climate of uncertainty is making financial decisions so difficult, we might risk putting them off for even longer. That also carries a cost.

A conundrum that’s occupying UK financial regulators is why Britons are hoarding an estimated £430bn of “excess cash” rather than investing it in the stock market.

So, what mindset would get more of us investing? And what lessons can those who are invested but nervous take from this?

“The key thing about making decisions under uncertainty is that you have to accept that you cannot know [the outcome],” says Professor David Tuckett, who acted as an academic adviser to HSBC on the project.

In his 2008 book Minding the Markets, he asked more than 50 active fund managers to list three examples of investment decisions they were happy with, and three they were not.

“What I noticed was that there was nothing different that you or I could see in the two classes of decision,” he says. An equal amount of research, discussion and tyre-kicking had gone into both. “The only thing that was different was the outcome. And that is because, fundamentally, the outcome is uncertain.”

Even managers who had made the right investment calls admitted that sometimes their outperformance was powered by a factor they hadn’t originally considered.

However, when he asked managers why they thought certain investments had failed, they tended to blame themselves: “They said things like I didn’t work hard enough, that’s why I didn’t succeed.” Interesting — though you can be sure they were still rewarded handsomely for trying.

For retail investors, accepting that not all of our investment decisions are going to work out can be hard to do (especially when we start out). Experience, taking a long-term view, being diversified and having a strategy in place to regularly review your portfolio all help. And as every index investor knows, while some active managers beat the market, it’s virtually impossible for them to outperform consistently.

Feeling remorseful undermines confidence and adds to the self-limiting belief that you are bad with money

We’re all finding it hard to make financial decisions but the HSBC study identified one group who found it even harder — the neurodiverse. Some readers might dismiss this as just the latest buzz term but, if you or a family member have autism, ADHD, dyslexia or dyspraxia, then you will know the struggle is real.

Nearly two-thirds of neurodivergent respondents felt ill-equipped to manage financial decision-making, and more than half often regretted decisions they’d made about money — significantly higher than the neurotypical respondents.

Clare Seal, the author of Real Life Money, uses the term “the ADHD tax” to describe how being neurodivergent has had an impact on her own finances. She says being indecisive about money management has a cost — such as late fees if you don’t pay on time, and higher interest rates on debt if you damage your credit score.

Plus, impulsive spending is a very common issue. If you can’t budget effectively, there’s less chance of having so-called “excess cash” to invest. She has introduced more friction in her own finances to counter this. “If all you need to do is tap or click one button to buy something, you’re much more likely to give in to that impulse.”

Harbouring regret about poor decisions is the flip side of this coin. “Feeling remorseful undermines confidence and adds to the self-limiting belief that you are bad with money,” she says. This can contribute to what’s called pathological demand avoidance, which she describes as feeling like “a concrete barrier” has prevented her from engaging with her finances in the past.

We are both hugely encouraged that banks are finally showing more interest in this very under-researched issue. What’s more, some are developing new services to help neurodivergent customers.

Monzo, the digital bank, promotes a suite of digital budgeting tools to customers with ADHD, including its automated salary sorter, plus the ability to opt out of borrowing entirely and set custom daily limits for ATM withdrawals and card transactions. Its business account offers the ability to set up a “tax pot” to automatically hive off a set percentage of payments and save towards future bills.

Of course, you don’t have to be neurodivergent to make use of these features. But thinking about the needs of different customers is what’s resulting in the kind of innovations that can help everyone feel more confident managing their money.

As the financial regulator moves closer to enabling simplified financial advice and targeted support, I’m hopeful that much more will follow in the investment world too.

Claer Barrett is the FT’s consumer editor and the author of ‘What They Don’t Teach You About Money’. claer.barrett@ft.com; Instagram @Claerb

Up to 30,000 people in two cities in central Japan have been ordered to evacuate after weather forecasters warned of major flooding caused by heavy rain.

About 18,000 people in the city of Wajima and another 12,000 in Suzu have been told to seek shelter in Ishikawa prefecture, Honshu island.

The Kyodo News website has published a picture showing an entire street flooded in Wajima.

The Japan Meteorological Agency (Jma) has issued a heavy rain emergency – the highest alert level – for parts of the prefecture.

Japan’s public broadcaster NHK quoted government officials as saying 12 rivers in the prefecture had breached their banks.

The region is still recovering after a deadly magnitude 7.5 earthquake on New Year’s Day.