This short film pays tribute to professor Saleemul Huq, an environmental and climate change giant who died on 28 October 2023.
Professor Saleemul Huq OBE (1952-2023)
Following the passing of Professor Saleemul Huq, senior fellow of IIED. This book of remembrance is open to all who wish to share their memories of Saleem.
Professor Saleemul Huq was an environmental and climate change giant and senior fellow and dear friend of IIED and many IIED colleagues past and present.
Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) and a senior associate of IIED, he was awarded an OBE by the Queen in the 2022 New Year’s Honours List for his services to combating international climate change.
The honour was awarded in recognition of his work to build climate expertise in Bangladesh, the UK and across the world.
Saleem was an expert on the links between climate change and sustainable development, particularly from the perspective of vulnerable developing countries. A constant voice for climate action and justice for the global South, he was the lead author of chapters in the third, fourth and fifth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Huq’s work with the IPCC spanned 1997 to 2014 and he contributed to reports that led to the panel being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
A professor at the Independent University, Bangladesh, and an advisor to the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group of the UNFCCC, Huq published hundreds of scientific as well as popular articles and was named by Nature in 2022 as one of its top 10 scientists.
He set up the climate change research group at IIED in 2000 and was its initial director – continuing as a senior fellow until 2021 – and worked across the institute to ensure climate was at the heart of all that IIED did.
IIED executive director Tom Mitchell said: “I would like to offer my deepest sympathy and condolences to Saleem’s family and loved ones on behalf of IIED. There was no one quite like Saleem and I will remember his unique combination of warmth, generosity of spirit, academic prowess and enormous standing in climate science.
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