Saleemul Huq

Saleemul Huq was born in 1952 in Dhaka, East Pakistan, which would become Bangladesh following the independence war of 1971. He grew up in a nation that would come to embody the frontline of climate vulnerability — a low-lying delta country with hundreds of millions of people exposed to cyclones, floods, and rising seas. This personal geography defined his life's work.

Huq studied natural sciences and later moved into environmental policy, eventually earning his doctorate and becoming one of the world's foremost experts on climate change adaptation. While much of the global climate discourse in the 1990s focused on mitigation — reducing greenhouse gas emissions — Huq recognised that the poorest and most vulnerable nations were already suffering from a crisis they had barely contributed to creating. He became the leading intellectual force behind the concept of Loss and Damage, the idea that wealthy industrialised nations have a moral and financial obligation to compensate countries that suffer irreversible harm from climate change.

He served as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change across multiple assessment cycles, helping shape the scientific consensus on adaptation. He founded and directed the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) in Dhaka, which became a globally recognised hub for adaptation research in the Global South.

At the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in 2022, Huq played a crucial role in the historic agreement to establish a Loss and Damage fund — a goal he had championed for decades. He died in Dhaka on 28 October 2023, just months after witnessing this landmark outcome. He is mourned as an irreplaceable voice for climate justice.