The World Bank has expressed its reluctance to manage the Bangladesh Climate Change Resilience Fund (BCCRF) due to a misunderstanding among parties, including the government, development partners and the WB itself.
This could mean the country will fail to receive further climate funds from the developed world.
Once the current agreement ends, the WB does not intend to go for a renewal, specifically because of the lengthy decision-making process in terms of project development and implementation on part of the government, said sources.
Abdullah Al Mohsin Chowdhury, joint secretary (development) of the Ministry of Environment and Forests and also leader of the secretariat of the BCCRF, said he had learned about it unofficially but the WB was yet to make a formal statement to the government.
Ainun Nishat, former country representative of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), said the World Bank’s reluctance to manage the BCCRF would lead to problems in receiving additional climate funds from development partners.
The donors had already indicated that the country was inefficient in terms of fund management, he said.
According to the 2012 agreement between Bangladesh and the WB, the latter would manage the fund with a 1% service charge until June 2017.
In 2012, the BCCRF was formed with contributions from development partners that include the European Union, the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, the US and Australia.
Since its inception, the managerial role of the fund has always been performed by the WB in view of the interests of the development partners.
At present, the fund has around $188m, with nearly $154m already allocated to different projects.
However, without clarifying the WB’s stance, Christine Kimes, acting country head of World Bank Bangladesh, told the Dhaka Tribune that the recent mid-term review of the BCCRF had indicated a number of challenges, which the bank and the donors were now working to address.
Meanwhile, seeking anonymity, a top government official told the Dhaka Tribune that the WB’s reluctance had already made the BCCRF’s
fund-raising activities slow and it had already planned to retreat from the process.
Besides, there are some other global climate funds, including Adaptation Fund and Green Climate Fund. Of those, Green Climate Fund is supposed to release the money from this September.
Bangladesh is one of the nations that are most vulnerable to the negative impacts of global warming, according to several studies of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In 2009, the government formulated Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP) as a guideline on how to tackle the negative impacts of climate change.
In line with the BCCSAP, the government formed two separate funds to take adaptation measures that include the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund (BCCTF) with its own resources and the BCCRF with contributions from development partners.
Ahsan Uddin Ahmed, executive director of Centre for Global Changes and a panel scientist at IPCC, said the WB’s reluctance regarding BCCRF should not be an obstacle to securing further climate funds.
Citing the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund (BCCTF) formed by the government’s own resources as an example, Ahsan said that despite some anomalies in fund management, the government had been managing the fund in order to take a range of adaptation measures.
Echoing Ahsan, Ainun Nishat said that Bangladesh has to first earn the capacity and trust from development partners in order to get additional climate funds and to manage climate funds in a rational way.
