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Wednesday | 15 January 2025 | Epaper

Hats off to our finance minister

Published : Saturday, 15 October, 2016 at 12:00 AM  Count : 368
Haradhan Ganguly
Finance minister AMA Muhith boldly expressed annoyance over little access to global climate finance despite Bangladesh being one of the worst victims of climate change. His expressed his dismay at his recent meeting with World Bank Vice President for South Asia region Annette Dixon. The finance minister was attending annual meetings of World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). On sideline meeting, he expressed his views. As reported in print media, our finance minister raised the concern when the heads of WB and IMF had urged the world's finance leaders to take urgent steps towards inclusive growth for ending extreme poverty. Experts say Bangladesh needs to invest more in efforts to offset climate change impacts for sustaining the country's recent trends in economic growth and poverty reduction. The finance minister echoed by saying, "We have done a lot with our own fund to adapt to the climate change impacts. But our access to the climate fund is very little." Hats off finance minister for reflecting our mindset over climate fund.
Our stride towards reducing extreme poverty was hold good by world community in a high esteem. For a further challenge to bring poverty below 3 per cent, we need a sustained growth of 8.8 per cent by 2030 if the country is to achieve the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). But the recurring impacts of climate change have been shattering our dreams and our efforts for targeted growth pursuits, making us vulnerable. Industrialised world and emerging economies like China and India are the major polluters. Their emission of carbon are not being kept in their promises at world climate summits held one after another and no international efforts are seen apt to reign in. Taking benefits of globalization, newly emerging economies also are emitting carbon above the accepted level to achieve high growth. But countries like Bangladesh are paying the prices for this.
The growing evidence on climate change suggests that green house gas (GHG) emissions, resulting from the cumulative action of developed and emerging economies, would have serious deleterious effects in near future, unless effectively contained. It is predicted that Bangladesh will be adversely affected by climate change in the form of melting of Himalayan glaciers, global warming and rising sea level, intensified natural calamities and greater water scarcity leading to loss of livelihood, rising unemployment and poverty. Furthermore, a rise in the sea level, leading to coastal submergence that is 17 per cent of Bangladesh, would cause a large scale displacement of people. Clearly, the vulnerability of the poor to climate change is large. The sixth plan took effective steps in collaboration with the international strategy to help Bangladesh address the adverse consequences of climate change. An acceptable and workable collaboration strategy must include fair and just burden sharing for mitigation as well as adaptation strategies across the nation. But wishes are gaseous still due to no effective international cooperation in this regard is in the offing.
Developing world including Bangladesh equates development efforts with addressing climate issues. Not only developing world, the entire world, the rich and the poor are realizing climate change so critical in existence. But crunch in resource mobilization and disregarding commitments made by well to do nations remain problems for addressing climate issues. Amid limited concessional resources, the finance minister stressed the need for getting ready to adapt to costly funds for supporting the development efforts. "Though we are benefited from concessional loans, we should be ready for scale up fund" he told newsmen on the sidelines of the WB-IMF events. He said Bangladesh has started taking both soft and hard-term loans to get adapted to costly funds as the country is about to graduate from a least developed country to lower middle income country. It will help us get more and more loans for development projects. Our present loan burden is only $24 billion. Our economy has the strength to shoulder twice of that amount. So we are not sceptic for spending money for development and thus addressing climate change. But the issue of global cooperation has become a mysterious phenomenon, so much US and China's obscure role is concerned.
Now time has come to think about the quality projects taken for addressing climate change. Critics are of views, even the WB sponsored projects are getting deteriorated in terms of quality determinants, they demand modifications. WB officials visit Bangladesh and stay here for a few days to hold discussions on the projects. We think they should stay for a longer period to help Bangladesh officials prepare flawless project documents. Different non-government organizations (NGOs) are also working on climate issues. Sometimes their sources of funding and accountability remain obscured, though all are not to be blamed for. But piecemeal works and lack of coordination do not bring in desired results in mitigating the onslaught of climate change. NGOs should connect their efforts in a holistic way of integrity with national planning. They should not confine only in organizing seminars, symposiums in the name of advocacy within cities. Climate funds are not flawlessly distributed and used for the purposes meant for. Media reports at times prove it.
We need climate fund in accordance with our needful. At the same time we need its proper use. Mind it, poverty is the single most important socio-economic policy challenge for us. Bangladesh has been struggling for a long time to reduce poverty and improve the living standards of its millions of impoverished people. Climate change is attributing to poverty expansion. Recent flood and the resultant river erosion have deteriorated the rural poverty scenario, though we have success story in reducing poverty in recent decades. Bangladesh has established a credible record of sustained growth within a stable macroeconomic framework. But such achievement is made fragile due to recurring onslaught of climate change. So our stress for getting sufficient fund to fight climate change will continue.r
Haradhan Ganguly is a freelance contributor and Secretary, United Nations Association of Bangladesh (UNAB). Email: gharadhan@gmail.com


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