As the discussions in Paris are getting hotter, some serious
dilemmas are getting more obvious – unfortunately, we are still far away from
having a common and targeted response to the questions posed. Let’s see the example of Bangladesh. With a
population of 140 million, Bangladesh is one of the world's most populated
countries. It is also one of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate
change. Cyclones, floods and droughts have long been part of the country's
history and they have intensified in recent years. As a result of the long
exposure to these hazards, Bangladesh is a world leader in adaptation
strategies but this has come with a heavy price tag. Bangladesh’s Ministry of
Finance has been working with the UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Initiative to
launch its first comprehensive climate change accounting system. The results of
the financial review were really astonishing.
Bangladesh currently spends $1 billion a year, 6 to 7% of
its annual budget, on climate change adaptation. This is roughly 20% of the
World Bank’s forecasted adaptation budget for the next 35 years! But it was
spent just for one year (but this is another story, there are a lot of
questions about the reliability of those long-term forecasts and their
documentation). The facts reveal that 75% of money spent on climate change in
the country comes directly from the government, while 25% comes from
international donors. There is one more shocking detail: the average European
citizen emits as much carbon in 11 days as the average Bangladeshi in an entire
year.
Then, allow me to come back to my previous post on Climate
Justice. We can’t put the burden for fighting climate change and funding
adaptation strategies to the citizens of Bangladesh, we simply can’t ask them
to pay for their protection from the pollution that the Western World has
created – but this is exactly what’s happening now, in many cases, as the case
of Bangladesh. If we don’t stop this practice, we simply erode any reliable
agreement on Climate Change – as I have already written there is no real
agreement without Climate Justice.
Ok, but someone can say that rich countries are committed to
provide 100 billion dollars to developing countries by 2020. On December 2, the
US special envoy for climate change Todd Stern had told a press conference that
donor countries were “well on the way to beating that pledge”. But allow me to
mention that I have some doubts about those 100 billion dollars. Initially, I
doubt a little bit about if those money will be, finally, available and also, I
have my questions regarding the time horizon in which they will be given. In addition “If
today’s public adaptation finance were divided among the world’s 1.5 billion
smallholder farmers in developing countries, they would get around $3 each year
to cope with climate change – the price of a cup of coffee in many rich
countries,” as Oxfam’s climate policy adviser Jan Kowalzig recently said.
But, unfortunately, I have a more important doubt. Are those
100 billion dollars going to be given as loans (which means actually as an
investment that will provide a certain profit) or as grants? Is it going to be
recognition that rich countries have to pay a big part of the bill they have
created or it will be one more way to create long-term dependencies of the poor
countries? Gambia’s environment minister, and representative of the least
developed countries group, Pa Ousman Jarju was absolutely right when he said:
“We cannot take loans to pay for climate change and take that as climate
finance. For us it needs to be grant-based finance because we are not responsible
for what is happening.” So, let’s hope he will be heard, but let’s think that
if the rich countries follow the path of loans, any climate deal will be
fragile, ineffective and it will create much more problems than it will
resolve.
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