Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury To Deliver “Peace And Equality”

(Long Island, NY) Ambassador of Bangladesh Anwarul Chowdhury, an expert on current critical issues including peace, sustainable development, and human rights, will speak at Adelphi University as part of the International Leadership Coordinating Committee Ambassador Series on “Peace and Equality—Absolutely Essential for a Better World” on Tuesday, November 13, 2012 in the Ruth S. Harley University Center Ballroom. This event is free and open to the public.

For the past two decades, Chowhurdy has been recognized as a leader in the movement for global peace. Ambassador Chowdhury currently holds the titles of Career Diplomat; Permanent Representative to the United Nations; President of the UN Security Council; and, President of the UNICEF board. From 2002 to 2007, he served as the UN Under-Secretary-General. Chowdhury has also served as the Secretary-General of the two major global conferences convened by the United Nations General Assembly: The Almaty International Conference on Global Transit Transport Cooperation in 2003 and the Mauritius International Meeting on Small Island Developing States in 2005.

Since October 2007, he has held the role as the Honorary Chair of the International Day of Peace NGO Committee. Chowdhury is a member of the Wisdom Council of the Summer of Peace 2012, a world-wide participatory initiative to advance the Culture of Peace, as well as a Board of Trustee of the New York City Peace Museum.

In 2007, he completed his term as the Under-Secretary-General and high representative for the most vulnerable countries of the world. From 1996 to 2001, Ambassador Chowdhury was Permanent Representative of Bangladesh, his native country, to the United Nations in New York. In addition, he served as Bangladesh’s Ambassador to Chile, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela as well as Bangladesh’ High Commissioner to the Bahamas and Guyana.

One of his major accomplishments as the president of the Security Council included an initiative that brought about the adoption of the groundbreaking UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which recognized for the first time the role and contribution of women in the area of peace and security.

Due to his contributions, in 1999 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the landmark “Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace.” He also initiated the declaration by the United Nations General Assembly of the “International Decade for Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World (2001-2010).”

Ambassador Chowdhury is the first recipient of the Institute for Global Leadership Lifetime Service Award which he received at the conference on New Leadership Models for Worcester, United States and the World held in Worcester, Massachusetts in May 2007. In October 2007, the United Nations NGO Committee on Spirituality, Values, and Global Concerns presented its first “SPIRIT OF THE UNITED NATIONS” Award to Chowdhury. Also in 2007, he received the highest honor of The Government of Burkina Faso in West Africa, “L’Ordre Nacionale,” in Ouagadougou for his championship of the cause of the most vulnerable countries. Chowdhury has earned a number of honorary degrees for his global peace efforts from Soka University, in Tokyo, Japan and Saint Peter’s College, in Jersey City, NJ, among others. More


 

Electricity from Solar Panels Transforms Lives in Rural Bangladesh

In 2002, only 7,000 Bangladeshi households were using solar panels. Today, more than 1.4 million low-income rural households in Bangladesh have electricity—delivered by solar PV panels, most of which are imported from China.

“It’s the fastest expansion of solar energy anywhere in the world,” said Formanul Islam of Bangladesh’s Infrastructure Development Company, which is working with the World Bank to install solar home systems across the

About half of Bangladesh’s 150 million people still don’t have access to reliable electricity, but with the low prices for solar PV panels, among other factors, installations under the Bank-supported project have doubled in the past two years to 40,000 a month.

“It is changing the face of the remote, rural areas of Bangladesh,” said Zubair Sadeque, Energy Finance Specialist in the World Bank’s Dhaka office.

Zubair is the task team leader of the Rural Electrification and Renewable Energy Development project in Bangladesh, for which the World Bank approved a $130 million zero-interest International Development Association (IDA) loan in 2009 and another $172 million loan in 2011. An earlier IDA credit had launched the project in 2002. What has changed is the pace of installations. “It has simply skyrocketed in the last couple of years,” he said.

The combination of competitively-priced solar PV panels and a well-designed financing scheme is now delivering life-changing—and zero-carbon—electricity to bottom-of-the-pyramid families on a scale that was inconceivable only a few years ago.

This drop in price of solar PV panels, combined with high prices for fossil fuels, slow pace of grid connections, along with the scale of cell-phone penetration among the poor, which is driving demand, has created vast new potential for off-grid solar—not just in Bangladesh, but in many other low-income countries. || Vijay Iyer, Director, Sustainable Energy Department, The World Bank

“It is a remarkable alignment of positive factors,” said Vijay Iyer, Director of the Bank’s Sustainable Energy department, who was instrumental in launching the project almost a decade ago. “This drop in price of solar PV panels, combined with high prices for fossil fuels, slow pace of grid connections, along with the scale of cell-phone penetration among the poor, which is driving demand, has created vast new potential for off-grid solar—not just in Bangladesh, but in many other low-income countries.”

Off-grid solar power, while not considered an option among high-intensity electricity consuming rich-country households, does meet the immediate needs of low-income households and small businesses in developing countries. A 40-to-120-watt solar panel is enough for a couple of lights and to charge a cellphone, which can transform lives in rural areas of Bangladesh.

As leaders prepare for the June 20-22 Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development, clean energy solutions like this one that deliver electricity to the world’s poor while also opening market opportunities should attract interest not only among donors, but private investors as well. The Bangladesh solar experience may provide a model to help achieve the goals of the Sustainable Energy for All initiative, namely universal access to electricity, double the share of renewable energy in the global mix, and double the rate of improvement of energy efficiency.

The project is implemented by a partnership between the Bangladesh Infrastructure Development Company (IDCOL) and about 40 non-governmental organizations, including private sector companies and microcredit agencies. More