Climate resilience and food security cannot be ensured without protecting land, Environmental, Forest and Climate Change Minister Abdul Awal Mintoo said on Monday.
“Land must be treated not as an environmental cost but as an economic and development priority,” he said.
The minister made the remarks at a ministerial dialogue titled “Innovative Financing Mechanisms for Healthy Land and Drought Resilience” on the sidelines of Finance Day at the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
Mintoo said Bangladesh is working to curb land degradation by prioritising soil fertility, forests, waterlogging, hill erosion, coastal salinity and river erosion in national planning.
He said the country is transforming agriculture into a technology-driven, climate-resilient sector while expanding credit support for farmers.
The minister urged multilateral development banks and development finance institutions to use guarantees, first-loss capital and blended finance to support smallholder farmers and land restoration.
Highlighting Bangladesh’s domestic efforts, Mintoo said the Climate Change Trust Fund has financed climate and land resilience initiatives since 2009. More than $495 million has so far been allocated through the fund.
The funding has helped develop 12 new stress-tolerant crop varieties and distribute more than 19,400 tonnes of drought- and salinity-tolerant seeds to farmers, he said. However, he noted that current demand has exceeded the fund’s annual allocation.
“International financing should complement national efforts by filling existing financing gaps, not replace them,” Mintoo said.
He proposed innovative financing mechanisms, including debt-for-nature and climate swaps and green bonds for land restoration.
Such financing could support controlled groundwater recharge in the Barind region, agriculture, afforestation, climate-smart farming and coastal mangrove restoration under the national green mission to plant 250 million saplings, he said.
On regional cooperation, Mintoo said changes in upstream water flows are increasing salinity and drought risks in deltaic countries like Bangladesh.
“Countries sharing river basins need stronger cross-border water-sharing arrangements and joint initiatives to exchange data on water scarcity and land degradation,” he said.