PM Hasina seeks international support to implement National Adaptation Plan

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday urged the international partners to support the efforts of Bangladesh to implement its National Adaptation Plan (NAP) for 2023-2050 which requires a total of US$ 230 billion.

“We shall need 230 billion US Dollar for implementing our NAP from both domestic and international resources. Bangladesh continues to seek a 50-50 distribution between adaptation and mitigation from international climate financing,” she said.

The prime minister said this while opening the Global Hub on Locally Led Adaptation at Foreign Service Academy in Dhaka, joining virtually from her official residence, Ganabhaban, in the capital.

She said Bangladesh government now spends 6 or 7 per cent of its GDP for climate adaptation and has recently launched the NAP for 2023-2050.

Mentioning that Bangladesh has set up a Climate Change Trust Fund back in 2009 after COP15 with its own resources, she said, the fund has so far implemented 800 projects for both climate adaptation and mitigation.

“Our NAP will complement the work being done under our Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100 and Mujib Climate Prosperity Plan. I invite our partners from the international public and private sectors to join us in this effort in the spirit of the Paris Agreement,” said Sheikh Hasina.

The prime minister also called upon all major carbon emitting countries to further enhance the scope of their nationally determined contributions in parallel.

She said, “We must all redouble our efforts to keep the global warming limited to 1.5 degree Centigrade.”

She continued that Bangladesh government will extend all possible support to the Global Hub on Locally Led Adaptation being launched today.

“We are pleased to have this as yet another offering from Bangladesh for the climate vulnerable people around the world,” she added.

She went on saying that Bangladesh looked forward to seeing the emergence of the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) Regional Office in Dhaka as a centre of excellence for the region and beyond.

The prime minister said the people of Bangladesh have been living with natural calamities for ages and have attained some sort resilience against flood, tidal surge, cyclone and other hazards.

She said that they have learned to adapt to the changing courses of nature and their collective efforts have turned Bangladesh into a climate adaptation hub.

Mentioning that Bangladesh’s founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had strong faith in people’s resilience, she said he had witnessed the untold sufferings of people after the Bhola Cyclone in 1970 where over a million people died in the devastating calamity.

As the then Pakistani rulers didn’t come forward to help people with rescue and relief operation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman protested their negligence towards the cyclone victims, she added.

Sheikh Hasina said that he (Bangabandhu) himself with the help of Awami League leaders and workers had carried out extensive relief and rescue operation for weeks.

After independence, she said Bangabandhu took initiatives to protect the coastal belt from cyclones and he had started establishing cyclone shelters which were locally called “Mujib Killa”.

He also launched the Cyclone Preparedness Programme (CPP) along with planting trees and CPP now comprises more than 76,000 volunteers, she said, adding, “We are still following his guidance for planning our climate action.”

Pointing out that Bangladesh’s local communities have their traditional knowledge and solutions for climate adaptation, the prime minister said, “Our government supports those solutions with resources and innovations. This combination has served us well in developing a pool of bankable locally-led adaptation measures.”

“We’ve now built cyclone and flood shelters across the country to shelter people and domestic animals,” she said, mentioning that these shelters usually function as primary schools.

She said the coastal green belt programme also continues through active community participation.

Referring that her party Bangladesh Awami League leaders and workers have been planting millions of saplings every year during monsoon since 1985, she said that artificial mangrove forests are being created at the shoals of the Bay of Bengal.

“We’ve set up 100 ‘Mujib Killas’ on the occasion of the Mujib birth centenary,” she added.

Highlighting that modern technologies are helping reach weather forecast and warning to the remote areas, including the deep sea, she said, “Bangladesh is now considered as a role model in disaster risk reduction.”

Sheikh Hasina said Bangladesh has developed saline-, drought- and flood-tolerant crop varieties, while floating agriculture is now widely practiced for vegetable production.

“Many innovative methods are being adopted for climate-smart fisheries and livestock rearing,” she said.

Mechanisation in agriculture is being emphasised, she said, adding, “We are encouraging roof-top cultivation for food production and heat reduction.”

She also said the country’s water management efforts are also guided by its people’s age-old co-existence with rivers, and in Bangladesh, “we recognise our rivers to be ‘living entities’“.

She said that the government has started dredging the rivers to increase their navigability and water retention capacity.

Easy access of safe drinking water to the people of coastal areas has been made, the prime minister said, adding that they are promoting adoption of renewable energy for irrigation purposes and households as it has the world’s largest solar home system.

“Our people have long been using migration as an adaptive response to climate impacts,” she said, adding “We need to give priority to both preventing and managing increased human mobility due to climate change.”

To this end, she said under the government’s flagship Ashrayan programme, they have built about a million semi-pucca disaster-tolerant houses for the homeless and landless people.

The world’s biggest multi-storied housing project for climate migrants is being built at Khurushkul in Cox’s Bazar, where 5,000 climate-refugee families accommodated in 139 multi-storey buildings, she added.

GCA chair former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, GCA chief executive officer Patrick Verkooijen, Bangladesh foreign minister AK Abdul Momen, environment, forest and climate change minister Md. Shahab Uddin and British High Commissioner to Bangladesh Robert Chatterton Dickson spoke on the occasion.