With the new year dawning, there is good news for Bangladesh to fight disasters and calamities induced by changing climate as France is closing in on signing a deal with Bangladesh to finance climate-change adaptation by early 2024.
French President Emmanuel Macron in an article, titled "Pillars of Green Wisdom," published by the Project Syndicate on Saturday disclosed that under the agreement, the French Development Agency would be contributing $1.1 billion in investment and the International Monetary Fund would be extending up to $1 billion worth of SDRs (special drawing rights) in new loans.
The advantage of this fund is that this loan will be provided for 20-year period at near-zero interest rates to finance climate action and pandemic preparedness in the poorest and climate vulnerable countries.
To benefit from this funding, the most vulnerable nations must create conditions that enable them to finance their climate-change mitigation and adaptation efforts and access the green technologies that are the new engines of growth.
Understandably, the Bangladesh government has already adopted initiatives to develop a framework to avail financing from the Loss and Damage Fund which was made operationalisation during the recent Dubai climate summit-the 28th Conference of the Parties for climate change (COP28). By the end of the COP28, the promised amount for the the L&D Fund amounted to nearly $700 million.
Moreover, Bangladesh has already met some of the targets set by the Global Goal on Adaptation by developing a national adaptation plan (NAP) and mainstreaming adaptation in development policies. For these achievements, Bangladesh has been regarded as a global leader with its recognition as a role model in disaster management.
The French president made it clear that the worlds most advanced economies, which have been the main CO2 emitters since the industrial revolution, must move away from fossil fuels like from coal by 2030, from oil by 2045 and from gas by 2050.
This is high time the world sped up the financing of renewables, as well as nuclear power, which, as a manageable and a decarbonized energy source, must play a key role in reducing the global warming.
Bangladesh has made the right decision to reap advantage of global financing for renewable energy. For instance, the Mujib Climate Prosperity Plan (MCPP) has set an ambitious goal to generate 40 percent of our total energy mix from renewable sources by 2040.
Emmanuel Macron stressed the need for reforms in the World Bank and the IMF, which play a prominent role in establishing the norms and financing the green transition on a global scale, pointing to the fact that eighty years after their creation, these institutions remain underfunded as compared to the size of the global economy and population.
We are in belief that Bangladesh with the support from the global financing will be able to fight the challenges posed by the ever changing climate.
