Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina presented six proposals to world leaders to waive climate finance for affected countries and end the futile arms race aimed at diverting funds to combat climate change.
He said, ‘The pointless arms race must be stopped and resources must instead be allocated to raising much-needed funds to combat climate change. We have to remember that when the existence of humanity is threatened, it will not do any good to follow the path of protecting narrow interests.’
He made the comments in a panel discussion titled ‘From Pocket to Planet: Scaling up Climate Finance’ at the Munich Security Conference 2024 in Germany on Friday.
Presenting the first of six suggestions, Bangladesh’s prime minister said, ‘We need to find a solution to climate finance allocations to keep us on the right track.’
He reiterated that developed countries must comply with their commitment to provide $100 billion per year over the two years up to 2025 based on the plan.
“By the end of this year, we must all agree on a new post-2025 climate finance target of over $100 billion based on scientific evidence,” he said.
In the second proposal, Sheikh Hasina said, the world must get rid of war and conflict, illegal occupation and brutal killing of unarmed civilians, especially women and children. What the world is witnessing in Gaza and elsewhere.
He said the impact of sanctions and counter-sanctions was felt far beyond the sense of conflict.
In a third suggestion, he said, the current level of adaptation financing needs to be at least doubled to address the acute funding imbalance for climate mitigation and adaptation.
To this end, he thanked French President Macron for pledging 1 billion euros to Bangladesh for adaptation assistance.
In a fourth suggestion, he said, the long-standing issue of facilitating access to developing countries’ funding from existing international climate funds should be addressed with opportunities to invest in their capacity.
In the case of Bangladesh, we have only two eligible institutions and two more are in the process of receiving funding from the Green Climate Fund, he said.
In the fifth suggestion, Sheikh Hasina said, in terms of reforms in the management of global financing, meaningful results should be shown by increasing the opportunities to obtain grants and favorable loans for them, especially in order to remove the debt burden of climate risk countries.
In the last and sixth suggestion, the Prime Minister said that governments need to invest in proper planning, policies and measures in terms of private capital flows for climate programmes. In addition, international financial institutions need to develop innovative, blended financing mechanisms to attract private capital for projects.
He said it is clear that without the participation of the private sector, the huge climate finance gap cannot be effectively addressed.
Sheikh Hasina said everyone recognizes the need to significantly increase the current level of international climate finance to invest in climate mitigation and adaptation.
Sadly, promised climate finance is still seriously inadequate, he said. This is further complicated by the absence of an internationally agreed definition of ‘climate finance’ and its accounting methods.
The Prime Minister said she attended a closed-door meeting of leaders during the COP-15 in Copenhagen in 2009 to find a last-minute solution and realized that securing international climate finance would be difficult. After returning home, he initiated the creation of the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund to undertake adaptation projects locally.
He said Bangladesh is now considered a laboratory of locally driven climate adaptation. Bangladesh has so far implemented nearly 800 projects at a cost of USD 480 million, all from its own resources. However, this is still insufficient compared to the $7-8 billion needed per year to implement our National Adaptation Plan.
To put things in perspective, the Prime Minister said, it is estimated that around US$ 6 trillion in funding is needed till 2030 for mitigation as per the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).
He said adaptation would require $215-387 billion annually by 2030. It is clear that the huge financing gap is exacerbating the global climate crisis.
Sheikh Hasina said that the COP-28 in Dubai has started a positive journey by launching the Loss and Damage Fund. We are pleased that $792 million has been committed to the Fund. We hope that additional pledges will be made to the fund.
He said, the Governing Board of Loss and Damage Fund has now been formed with full responsibility for financing decisions.
He emphasized the need for the fund to be governed by the principles of the Paris Agreement.
Sheikh Hasina said the fund must get new and additional money beyond ODA and other forms of climate finance. Importantly, the Loss and Damage Fund does not provide much-needed funding for climate adaptation.
He said the next task of the fund is to start disbursement of funds for viable projects. Funding should reach those who need it most.
The Prime Minister said that the money exemption process should be made simple and flexible. We hope that the Board of Directors of the Fund will give due consideration to the views of LDCs and SEEDS representatives.
He also said, I would definitely like to see Bangladesh as the first recipient of the Loss and Damage Fund assistance.
Regarding Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina said, although our contribution to global carbon emissions is negligible (less than 0.47% of global emissions), her country ranks seventh among the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world.
It is estimated that, between now and 2050, our annual GDP loss due to climate change will be 2%, and at this rate by 2100, the loss will be up to 9%. It is also estimated that as many as 13.3 million people in Bangladesh may be internally displaced due to climate change.
The Prime Minister said that Bangladesh now spends about 4.6 percent of the annual budget and 0.74 percent of GDP for climate adaptation and resilience, of which 75 percent comes from domestic resources.
Mentioning that Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund was formed in 2009 from its own resources, he said that the fund has so far implemented more than 800 projects with an investment of about 480 million US dollars.
Source: Bass
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