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Politics of climate fund
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The Daily Star
A.N.M. Nurul Haque
BANGLADESH has called for billions of dollars to be made available quickly for its fight against climate change at the 16th United Nations' Climate Conference, which kicked-off in Cancun, Mexico on November 29, considering its extreme vulnerability to the effects of climate change. The low-lying areas of the country are vulnerable to the catastrophic impact of global warming, with natural disasters killing around 200,000 people in the last 30 years.
The Copenhagen conference agreed to provide $30 billion between 2010 and 2012 to the world's poor nations severely affected by climate change related impacts. But quibbling over how to channel the fund and how to distribute it among the projects under strategies for adaption and mitigation has delayed disbursement.
Tough negotiations are also in progress for control and management of the global climate investment fund. Although the UN is at the forefront of organising the global conference to address the climate change issues, developed countries are relentlessly at work to give the management of the climate fund to the World Bank, ignoring demands of the developing countries for national ownership and UN supervision over the fund.
The developing countries, however, have placed their preference for using other existing funding channels, such as the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) under the UN Framework convention on climate change or the Adaptation Fund that was created under the Kyoto Protocol. The LDCF has the longest history of all the adaptation funds, having been created in 2002.
The adaptation fund is a fund to which developing countries have direct access, and need not apply through a third party, such as the UNDP. Senegal was the first country to get access to the fund. Senegal increased its coastal protection to prevent rice cultivation areas from being flooded by rising sea, which had devastated crop yields. It is estimated that the economic cost of rising sea-levels in coastal countries such as Senegal could be up to 14% of GDP.
Bangladesh has not yet received any amount from the fund committed to the developing countries on climate change at Copenhagen. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina recently asked the visiting UNDP administrator to take the issue seriously as the country remains the worst victim of global warming caused by reckless emission of greenhouse gas by the world's developed nations.
The WB announced on November 11 that Bangladesh, Niger and Tajikistan would be getting $270 million from its Climate Investment Funds (CIF) to cope with the effects of climate change. The WB has also approved $110 million for Pilot Programme on Climate Resilience (PPCR) in Bangladesh, of which $50 million is in the form of grant and $60 million in the form of credit.
The PPCR was created with $6.4 billion CIF administered by multilateral lending agencies, such as the WB and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), aiming to help the developing countries pilot low-emission and climate-resilient development. The total package earmarked for Bangladesh in the PPCR is $624 million, 92% of which is in the form of loan.
Bangladesh should not accept any loan from the PPCR for building climate-resilient development. The rapid rise in borrowings from abroad and unfavourable currency exchange rates have increased the country's per capital debt liabilities by about $2.3 a year on an average, over the last six years. At the end of 2008-09, Bangladesh's per capita debt obligation stood at $ 151.21, up from $136.92 in 2003-2004.
The number of cyclones, floods, tidal bores and droughts hitting Bangladesh has increased much in recent years, worsening its poverty. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that a one-metre rise in sea level would flood 17% of Bangladesh and about 20 million people might be displaced from coastal belts of the country as a result.
Many poor people living in the coastal and low-lying areas earn their livelihood from the seas. If the situation deteriorates further due to climate change it will be catastrophic for them. So everything necessary should be done to avert such situation. Bangladesh emits a very little amount of carbon in comparison to the developed nations but the country is most vulnerable to ozone layer damage.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called for establishing a Multi-Donor Trust Fund at the earliest and quick disbursement of the fund among the LDCs to enable them to face the devastating impacts of climate change. She made the call at the 66th ministerial session of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap) in Seoul in May this year.
After the Copenhagen climate conference, the climate issue was raised again by Sheikh Hasina at the Escap session. She has been attaching great importance to the climate change issue as the challenge from climate change, has become a global concern with the developing nations threatened with a major disaster and grave danger looming large in Bangladesh due to adverse impact of climate change.
The Equity and Justice Working Group, which has been working relentlessly to create awareness on climate change, has raised the ownership issue of CIFs once again, saying that WB is taking over the fund to use it as business conduit for the developed countries. It referred to allocation of $310 million to the Philippine government from the climate fund in 2009, but the loan statement showed $250 million of it as WB's loan to the country.
The climate related assistance being overtaken by business has raised a question about whether the fund pledged to developing countries at Copenhagen, and transfer of technology, will really serve the cause of the climate victims across the world.
The Cancun climate summit is considering a so-called Green Fund that would help channel aid to poor countries likely to suffer the worst effects of climate change in the coming decades. Though the expectations from the Cancun summit are not high, all the stakeholders in the summit should strive to reach an accord for quick disbursement of funds pledged to the developing countries at Copenhagen overcoming all the trickeries of the wealthy nations.
Among the most urgent needs to face the adverse impact of climate change is to provide adequate funds without delay for the vulnerable nations, including Bangladesh. This must be done immediately. Addressing climate change requires urgent actions by all people, rich and poor, and all countries, developed and developing, as all of them will have to live on this earth.
From: http://www.thedailystar.net, 6 December 2010.
