Plastic waste is accumulating in natural environments, causing long-term damage to ecosystems, wildlife, and human health. The widespread use of single-use plastics, driven by their affordability and convenience, contributes to the enormous amount of plastic waste generated. However, only a small percentage of plastic is recycled globally. Governments, organizations, and individuals are taking measures to combat plastic pollution, including improving waste management, promoting recycling, and increasing awareness. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is actively involved in addressing the problem and aims to develop a legally binding international agreement on plastic pollution. In Bangladesh, plastic pollution poses a severe challenge due to inadequate infrastructure and poor waste management practices.
Situated at the deltaic confluence of three great Asian rivers—the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna—the Sundarbans is a testament to nature’s resilience and complexity. Spanning approximately 10,000 square kilometers (about half the area of New Jersey), this labyrinthine network of tidal waterways, mudflats, and small islands is predominantly situated in Bangladesh, with a smaller portion extending into India. The topographic and ecological uniqueness of this area earned it the designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, attesting to its global environmental significance and the imperative for its conservation.
Ecopreneurship is a term coined to represent the process of principles of entrepreneurship being applied to create businesses that solve environmental problems or operate sustainably. The term began to be widely used in the 1990s, and it is otherwise referred to as "environmental entrepreneurship.“
In the book Merging Economic and Environmental Concerns Through Ecopreneurship, written by Gwyn Schuyler in 1998, ecopreneurs are defined as follows: "Ecopreneurs are entrepreneurs whose business efforts are not only driven by profit, but also by a concern for the environment. Ecopreneurship, also known as environmental entrepreneurship and Nature capitalism, is becoming more widespread as a new market-based approach to identifying opportunities for improving environmental quality and capitalizing upon them in the private sector for profit. " As the need and context changed in today's world, Change Initiative believes the term and scope should evolved to "Greenpreneurship". Following slide describes this concept in detail. South Asian nations have been grappling with the devastating consequences of climate change, including floods, cyclones, heatwaves, and declining agricultural productivity. The economic toll of these climate-induced disasters is staggering, with projections indicating that South Asia could face losses of USD 997 billion by 2070. The need for urgent and effective action cannot be overstated.
In recent years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has portrayed itself as a climate champion through its flagship research publications, staff policy papers, public-facing factsheets, and speeches. But what does its track-record reveal when it comes to its most consequential activity: lending to countries in crisis in exchange for policy reforms? This report examines the evidence from recent IMF loans to Bangladesh and Uganda, as well as additional IMF loans and reports. The report’s findings present a mixed picture. On the one hand, there have been promising developments. Most notably, the IMF has created the Resilience and Sustainability Facility, a new lending instrument that can help countries implement climate change adaptation and mitigation measures. Further, the organisation’s analytical work increasingly covers climate issues, including economic risks from climate change. However, these encouraging steps coexist with the continuing advocacy of policies that are not compatible with meeting the challenge of the green transition. The endorsement of fossil fuel investment as a solution to fiscal and external imbalances neglects environmental costs that have substantial downstream economic effects. Extensive fiscal consolidation measures—better known as austerity—threaten to starve public budgets from the resources needed to invest in green policies. The advocacy of public-private partnerships is also problematic, as even when they are touted as solutions to climate financing gaps, they can have adverse and unpredictable consequences on public budgets and undermine future green investments.
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