Bangladesh needs proper assessment of climate change vulnerability to take adequate adaptation measures in tackling the negative impacts of the phenomena, speakers told a discussion yesterday.
At the Gobeshona Conference being held in Independent University of Bangladesh of the capital, they also urged the government to adopt integrated planning as well as financing with proper consideration regarding the vulnerability.
Citing example of cyclone- and drought-prone zones, Zakir Hossain Khan, senior programme manager of Climate Finance Governance at the Transparency International, Bangladesh, said both the regions had received less amount of fund from the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund (BCCTF) compared to the other regions. “It proves that the government does not consider the actual need.”
Suggesting that the government consider the vulnerable zones for fund mobilisation, he mentioned that extreme poverty rate in those zones was higher than the other places.
He was speaking at a session titled “Political Economy and Climate Finance.” A good number experts and researchers from home and abroad has been participating in the four-day-long conference that began on Thursday.
Gobeshona, a knowledge network for research on climate change in Bangladesh, aims at making research on climate change more effective and ready for take-up by the practitioners.
According to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Bangladesh is identified as being at specific risk from climate change due to its exposure to sea-level rise and extreme events like salinity intrusion, drought, erratic rainfall and tidal surge which will hamper the country’s food as well as livelihood security.
The coastal zones of Bangladesh is vulnerable to sea-level rise while the northern part of the country is identified as drought-prone areas.
The government formulated the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP) in 2009 as a guideline to tackle the negative impacts of global warming.
Under the guideline, the government created the BCCTF with its own resources in 2010 to take adaptation measures. It received Tk2,700 crore as of the current fiscal from the government’s revenue budget.
Of the total fund, 218 government projects were approved with estimated cost of around Tk1,970. The Water Resources Ministry received the highest allocation for building infrastructures like embankment and dams while the second highest fund receiving sector is the food security, social protection and health.
In addition to the BCCTF, the government created another fund named Bangladesh Climate Change Resilience Fund (BCCRF) with the contribution of development partners including the European Union, Denmark, Canada and the UK.
Regrading finance, TIB’s Zakir said both the funds had addressed climate change vulnerability partially by approving the projects but failed to improve conditions in the poverty-stricken climate vulnerable areas.
Md Kamruzzaman, programme coordinator of climate change at Islamic Relief Bangladesh, urged the government to establish a separate ministry or body to coordinate with the issue of climate change. It would help avoiding the rising anomalies regarding project distribution and fund management, he observed.
However, Dr Saleemul Huq, director at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), said the government should emphasis on mainstreaming the issue of climate change, rather not forming a separate body for it.
Integrating climate change in all the development measures planned by the government could bring the best outcome, he added.
