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A Turning Point in Global Biodiversity Thinking Biodiversity represents the full spectrum of life-genes, species, and ecosystems, and the intricate web of interactions that sustains Earth’s productivity, resilience, and capacity to adapt. Its value extends far beyond species counts or economic metrics; it is the living infrastructure that purifies air and water, stabilizes climate, and nurtures human and ecological wellbeing. The true worth of ecosystems lies in their self-re

On this humid November morning in Belém, far from the large plenaries and scripted press conferences, meeting room 18 seems to crackle with energy. The official COP30 badge on the door reads: “Transformative Dialogue on Natural Rights–Led Governance (NRLG).”  The framework of NRLG, developed by M. Zakir Hossain Khan, offers a powerful remedy for achieving planetary justice and inclusive Earth governance. Inside something was forming even rarer than a new text.  Indigenous lea

Why Natural Rights Governance Is the Only Viable Path to Protect People and Planet . The world has been talking about the language of the Paris Agreement promises, pathways, and promises of temperature control for almost ten years now. However, the climate is still disintegrating. Storms are worse; droughts extended and displaced more permanently. Paris was a treaty of intent; missing moral architecture is Natural Rights Led Governance (NRLG). Nationally Determined Contri

Urbanization is considered a sign of advancement. Skyscrapers, transportation networks, and digital lines of communication are often regarded as symbols of progress. But behind these shiny facades, more than 1 billion people in the world live in slums characterized by deprivation, the UN Statistics Division says. From Kibera in Nairobi to Dharavi in Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, slums remind us that rapid urban expansion is not synonymous with better living conditions.

Photo by the Author The Rohingya crisis is not a new tragedy; it is a recurring wound in the conscience of South and Southeast Asia. For generations, the Rohingya people, an ethnic Muslim minority native to Myanmar’s Rakhine State, have lived as a community stripped of belonging. The crisis deepened in August 2017 when a brutal military operation in Rakhine drove over 700,000 Rohingya across the Naf River into Bangladesh. It was not the first exodus; smaller waves had occurr

Part 1 The Status Quo: A Broken System It’s hard to ignore the cracks that are starting to show in the picture of “advancement” that...

By a Citizen Who Walked the Streets and Read the Skies I remember the smell of tear gas more vividly than the monsoon that came three...

It was like any other day in July, scorching hot in Dhaka, Bangladesh. A schoolyard was just about to fill with the noisy chatting of...

Urban sustainability has emerged as a dominant framework for designing and evaluating city environments. But is it a genuine solution to...

A Boy in the Heat It is late July, and Dhaka feels like a city on fire. In a narrow lane of Sutrapur, twelve-year-old Rafiq tries to...

Part 2 As I argued in the first part of the theory on Natural Rights Led Governance (NRLG), the Development–Destruction Trap exposes how modern governance structures are enabling intergenerational harm and planetary injustice by prioritizing GDP growth and resource extraction over life-supporting systems. This second part engages in a necessary alternative: the paradigm of Nature’s Sovereignty (NS). Here, I bring forward the exact formulations and propositions articulated in