'With enough foreign funding, Bangladesh can do more to face climate risks'

Environment, forest and climate change minister Md Shahab Uddin has said that Bangladesh is working on reducing climate risks not only with foreign aid but also with its own funding, reports UNB.

"Up until 2020-21 fiscal year, about Tk 3.9 billion (3.852 billion) has been allocated from the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund, set up in 2009. With the fund, ministries, government offices, different organisations and institutions are accepting and implementing more than 850 projects," the minister added.

"Bangladesh will be able to do more to face the risks of climate change if it receives sufficient foreign funding."

Shahab Uddin was speaking at the shadow parliamentary debate competition ‘COP27 Could Not Reflect the Expectations of Climate Affected Countries’, organised by Debate for Democracy in Dhaka Saturday.

The vital United Nations climate talks, billed as one of the last chances to stave off climate breakdown, took place between 6-18 November in Egypt's Sharm El Sheikh amid a multitude of competing crises, including the war in Ukraine, high inflation, food shortages and an energy crunch.

Negotiators spent frantic days discussing whether to formally consider the issue of loss and damage, or reparations, to vulnerable nations suffering from climate change, and the issues, which weighed on the talks for years.

For Bangladesh, climate finance was one of the major topics to be broached at the 27th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27).

"This year's climate conference decided that climate-affected countries like Bangladesh must be compensated by developed countries. The developed countries will have to deliver on the USD 100 billion finance per annum that they had promised to provide to the countries hit by climate change earlier."

"Also, the conference decided to create a loss and damage fund, but the source of funding was not determined. This has to be fixed urgently. To implement Bangladesh's Climate Adaptation Plan (NAP) USD 230 billion is needed," he added.

"Through the implementation of Bangladesh's Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) 21.85 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by 2030 if sufficient foreign funding is received."