e-News® | The NEWS Company…DHAKA, Oct 15, 2015 : Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) today demanded for bringing high carbon emitting countries under legal bindings to disburse their committed fund to less carbon generating but climate change affected countries.
“We are urging Bangladesh government to raise the issue of framing an agreement regarding legal binding in climate financing during the upcoming conference in Paris,” TIB Executive Director Dr Iftekharuzzaman told a press conference at its office in Dhanmondi here. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is going to organize the climate change related international conference titled “COP (Conference of the Parties)-21” in the French capital Paris from November 30 to December 11 this year.
During the Paris conference, Dr Iftekhar said TIB is demanding to fix the definition of climate financing by including “additional” and “new” fund instead of credit under the “compensation from Carbon emitting countries” policy.
Besides, he said “we are firmly demanding to form a roadmap on disbursing committed fund to the affected countries from the industrialized countries as well as to ensure transparency, accountability and involvement of civil society in both national and international level climate financing.”
He said TIB also demands to sign an international agreement with legal framework for limiting the scale of global warming by minimum 2 degree Celsius. Congratulating Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to achieve the Champions of the Earth Award, Dr Iftekhar said this recognition has increased responsibility of Bangladesh to create pressure for framing a legal binding with the developed countries on disbursing climate fund on behalf of the millions of climate change affected people across the globe.
“I would like to request our Honourable Prime Minister to give direction to the Bangladesh delegation to raise their voice on these issues during the conference,” he said. TIB’s Senior Programme Manager on Climate Finance Governance M Zakir Hossain Khan presented a paper while Deputy executive director Prof Dr Sumaiya Khayer was present. Referring to United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) findings that the world needs US 150 billion dollar annually by 2025 for climate change adaptation, Zakir said the developed countries have so far disbursed only US 2.6 billion dollar against their commitment of US 35 billion dollar from 2010 to 2015.
“But unfortunately no provision has been made in the draft of upcoming Paris agreement that could indicate to frame legal outline to ensure allocating grants for the climate fund,” he said.
Zakir said though current adaptation fund and LDCF are empty, there is no guideline in the draft of the Paris accord in this regards. He said 34 industrialized and emerging economy countries had given commitment to disburse only US 10.2 billion dollar under Green Climate Fund (GCF) earlier, but so far they disbursed only 50 percent.
Noting that the draft Paris agreement included the loan as one of the mechanisms of fund sourcing for climate adaptation, he said “It is unacceptable. It’s an unlawful violation of commitment as it sees climate fund as profitable investment or business,” he said. He alleged that some developed countries are trying to create pressure to the climate change affected countries to take loan instead of grants for their adaptation programme.
