Saleemul Huq was a tireless climate scientist and champion of climate justice. Throughout his career, he advocated for the rights of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities in the battle against climate change. He pushed for global funds to help communities to adapt and cope, and established institutions that echoed his visionary goals.

Huq portrayed low- and middle-income countries as heroes in the climate crisis, not victims. He died aged 71, and did not live to see one of the most important outcomes of his work: the operationalization of a ‘loss and damage’ fund with US$700 million in initial pledges at the opening of COP28, the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in November.

Huq also had an extensive research career. As a lead author for third, fourth and fifth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he played a pivotal part in shaping global climate action. His work contributed to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC in 2007, as well as to UN Sustainable Development Goals 13 (on climate action) and 17 (on partnerships for the goals).

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Huq was born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1952, and his life was marked by resilience and determination. Escaping political turmoil in Pakistan, his diplomat parents embarked on a remarkable journey, traversing Afghanistan to reach India on a donkey in the early 1970s. His educational path took him through Germany, Indonesia and Kenya, culminating in a BSc in botany in 1975 and a PhD in 1978 from Imperial College London, on cyanide-resistant respiration in plant mitochondria.

In the mid-1980s, Huq founded an indepen-dent think tank, the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) in Dhaka, to develop environmental policy and support the Bangladeshi government. He pioneered the concept of climate adaptation and helped at-risk communities to find their own solutions to problems caused by the changing climate. He stressed that attention should be balanced between climate mitigation and adaptation. A committed adherent of the ‘polluter pays’ principle, he urged wealthy nations to pledge sufficient funding for climate adaptation in low-income countries.

The same principle drove his campaign for a loss-and-damage fund. It took decades of negotiation to bring this idea, first proposed in the early 1990s by small island nations such as Vanuatu, to the point at which wealthy countries have begun to pledge serious money — not as aid but as compensation for the losses experienced by low-income countries as a result of industrialization in the global north. In 2001, Huq spearheaded the creation of the least developed countries (LDC) negotiating group under the UNFCCC. The group had a pivotal role in steering the climate negotiations towards vital milestones, including securing the 1.5 °C warming-limit target and addressing loss and damage due to climate impacts in the Paris agreement.