Dhaka to push for proportional allocation of aid

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Bangladesh will push for proportional allocation of global aid to finance climate change adaptation strategies, as part of broader efforts to reduce global warming, when Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed attends a high-level UN panel on climate change in New York Monday.

The panel set up by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, will comprise heads of state and government to debate ways towards a comprehensive multilateral framework for action on climate change for the period after 2012.

The chief adviser will make a five-minute presentation and he will also co-chair the afternoon session of the debate with Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

Bangladesh is looking to posture as a post-Kyoto regime, whereby countries who are likely to be the hardest hit by climate change will look to enforce more binding agreements beyond greenhouse gas emission targets, diplomatic sources say.

Dhaka prefers a post-Kyoto protocol, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, regime as the long-term plan, as foreign ministry officials told The Daily Star that the refusal of powerful countries, such as the United States, to sign the 1998 Kyoto Protocol and the treaty’s expiry in 2012, has rendered the emission targets in the protocol largely redundant.

Diplomatic sources add, the likelihood of the European Union pushing for new and more binding emission targets at the Bali UN Climate Change Conference in December, also gives Dhaka greater space to hammer out a long-term and focused diplomatic strategy to mitigate global warming.

As part of this post-Kyoto regime, Bangladesh will broadly focus on financing adaptation strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change, such as greater frequency of floods, water salinity and inundation of large parts of southern Bangladesh due to rising sea level.

Foreign Adviser Iftekhar A Chowdhury yesterday told the media that Dhaka will step up its efforts to secure finances for Bangladesh’s government and non-government adaptation programmes.

Currently, international climate change bodies look to finance the affected countries equally, pitting small island states like Nauru, with a population of around 13,000, on the same adaptation finance schemes as Bangladesh.

As such, Dhaka’s diplomatic efforts during the upcoming United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and in December’s UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, will focus on a more proportional, per-capita-based, financial mechanism to support adaptation programmes around the world.

“The demand for per-capita-based financing of adaptation schemes is a legitimate and ethical issue and we have to push for it,” said A Atiqur Rahman, executive director of Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, a member of the International Panel on Climate Change, and a coordinator of Monday’s high-level meeting.

He added that an ethical stance is essential for Bangladesh, as this gives it the required leverage as a “poor man’s strategy” in international politics.

Atiqur also said Bangladesh must also value the concerns of low-lying pacific countries, like Nauru, who are set to be annihilated as a result of climate change.

The expert also said it is imperative that adaptation strategies are “mainstreamed” into development and government policy, given that a decision to immediately stop emitting all greenhouse gases will not prevent climate change wrecking havoc in Bangladesh.

Atiqur suggested, Bangladesh’s adaptation strategies should be three-pronged and the response needs to be synchronised. Structural adaptation to climate change will involve preparing for more frequent floods, raising houses, roads and embankments in coastal areas.

Agricultural adaptation strategies will require cultivating greater varieties of rice to mitigate future food insecurities, and autonomous adaptation will require eco-friendly urbanisation, such as preventing the blockage of city drainage systems.

In May, the key UN intergovernmental body on the environment ended a conference among ministers from around the world without coming up with a document after the European Union blocked the final paper because it did not include targets for energy efficiency or global warming.

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