After five years of allocating funds, the Finance Minister expressed his doubt about the necessity of the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund.
Abul Maal Abdul Muhit, who has been allocating moneys for the trust fund since 2010, expressed his frustration over the projects as he suspected abuse and malpractices. He said he did not want to allocate more of Bangladesh’s own resources from the next fiscal.
Bangladesh is one of the worst victims of climate change and the money was allocated to reduce its negative impacts.
The minister made the observation in a letter to the Environment Ministry seeking their thoughts about the trust fund saying that it had become unnecessary from the way it was going.
Terming the BCCTF a “new window” for Water Development Board and Forest Ministry projects, the finance minister said the trust fund had already lost its relevance by not taking up appropriate projects to tackle climate change.
The government allocated Tk2,700 crore in BCCTF since the 2009-10 fiscal in 277 projects worth Tk2,200 crore till now. Of these, the Bangladesh Water Development Board alone bagged 117 projects.
Of these, 65 projects have already been completed and 85 other projects are expected to be finished by June but they do not account for more than 30% of the projects initiated.
Regarding the anomalies and sluggishness, the Trustee Board of BCCTF comprised of 10 ministers led by the Environment and Forest Minister increased the time duration of 12 projects and reduced funds of 23 others in its 34th meeting on February 24.
In addition, the government has formed another fund named Bangladesh Climate Change Resilience Fund (BCCRF) with the contribution of development partners, which received around US$189.5 million till 2012, with no more contributions since.
The BCCRF has been maintained by the World Bank since its formation in 2011, though the WB has already declared it will not continue with the fund past 2016.
In his letter, the Finance Minister said the objective of BCCTF was to initiate short-term projects and build the capacity of the ministries to tackle climate initiatives, and the fund would eventually be dissolved with the Environment Ministry taking care of the resilience fund.
Dissolving the BCCTF, he rather suggested to strengthen the BCCRF for climate projects, if needed.
In reply, the Environment Minister Anwar Hussain Manju said he agreed with the observation of getting more projects by certain specific ministries.
However, he requested Muhith to reconsider and continue funding, since stopping it altogether would give the wrong message to the international community regarding the government’s management capacity.
The government formulated the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP) 2009 as the guideline for climate projects but failed to take up a good number of projects based on priority and need, which was the core direction of the action plan, said Ahsan Uddin Ahmed, executive director of Centre for Global Changes, adding that in most cases the money had been wasted on irrelevant projects.
Also on the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, the highest body on climate change in the world, Ahsan said the BCCTF has been facing lack of trust due to the abuse of its funds.
Regarding the negative impression that would arise out of dissolving the state-run fund, Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies chief executive Atiq Rahman said the message was already out there loud and clear due to the previous practices.
It should now run in a transparent manner for the sake of the country’s image, he said.