Bangladesh’s focus adaptation financing

What will Bangladesh’s proposals be in this year’s COP to implement the Paris Agreement?There are two major issues in the discussion - mitigation and adaptation. But our interest is in adaptation as we are one of the most vulnerable nations, and also emit a negligible amount of carbon-di-oxide to the atmosphere. We will try to address the loss and damage of our country as well as the people due to the adverse impacts of climate change. Our target will be to set a mechanism so that we can reduce our risk.But Article 52 of the decision chapter under the Paris Agreement says that the developed countries will not take any responsibility and liability of already affected people. Then how you will talk about the loss and damage issue? Are there any options to discuss the issue, to get the compensation?Yes, still there is some space to talk on the issue. Loss and damage issue is now being discussed under the Warsaw International Mechanism. Under that mechanism, an executive committee is working to prepare a 2-year and a 5-year interim plan on how to set up the compensation mechanism.There is no clear road map on climate financing in the Paris Agreement. Do you have any proposal?I do not think that there are no directions. There are some. For example, the Paris Agreement says that the finance will go towards mitigation and adaptation with a 50-50 balance.But, according to article 9 (4) of the Paris Agreement, the balance of financing is not obligatory rather voluntary.Actually, this sort of agreement is always based on mutual understanding. You may call this a gentlemen’s agreement, which does not need to be legally binding.  When a country ratifies an international agreement, it makes an obligation to itself to maintain that agreement. If you look at the Kyoto protocol, the countries adopted that but finally some of them refrained from signing and ratifying the protocol which ultimately led to a failure. In case of the Paris Agreement, this has not happened. It already came into force on October 5.Regarding loss and damage, we are hearing of insurance mechanisms. What is Bangladesh thinking about that?If the insurance mechanism ultimately helps us, we will take it. The issue is still in preparation stage and we are discussing it and trying to learning about it.Bangladesh is yet to have direct access to the Green Climate Fund.Yes. Not only Bangladesh, none of the countries which are trying to get funds has direct access into the GCF. However, we have a project worth US$80 million through a German Bank KFW. If we want to get resources from GCF, we need a national implementing agency which we do not have. But we are trying to get direct access. That is why we have already designated six organisations to make them able to get direct access from the fund.To get direct access to GCF, the fund authority introduces a comprehensive mechanism including physical capacity and fiduciary management policies. What Bangladesh is doing to meet the conditions of the GCF?We are trying to enhance our capacity and management skills to meet their conditions so that we can get direct access from the fund through our own implementing agency.At the same time, Bangladesh is trying to get loans to take adaptation measures. The recent declaration of US$2 billion loan as climate financing in Bangladesh by the World Bank’s visiting boss creates a confusion. Is the government backtracking from demanding climate compensation?No, the loan from World Bank was not part of our plan. It was somehow placed to them or they have given that in their own interest. We (the Environment Ministry) did not approach them.Can you give me a summary of your proposal which you are going to place in this year’s COP?Firstly, we will emphasise on the financing so that we can get resources as early as possible to implement our projects to reduce the risk of global warming. As we are not liable to carbon-emission, we will not focus on mitigation. And in the case of adaptation, our financing has to be on grant basis. We will not take any loans. In addition, we will try to strengthen the Warsaw International Mechanism to get output for loss and damage.