In a first for Asia, Bangladesh, int’l partners launching Climate Platform
UNB :
Bangladesh and its international development partners on Sunday announced a collaborative approach to support a package of measures aimed at enhancing the nation’s ability to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.
The partners are Asian Development Bank (ADB), the World Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank ( AIIB), Agence Française de Développement (AFD), the European Union and the European Investment Bank (EIB), as part of Team Europe, the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the Government of South Korea, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and the United Kingdom.
This collaborative support will bolster Bangladesh’s efforts to address the impact of climate change on vulnerable communities, according to a message received here from Dubai and issued by the IMF.
This partnership, the first of its kind in Asia, takes place in the context of the $1.4 billion Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF) arrangement approved by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s Executive Board in January 2023, the programmatic series of Green and Climate Resilient Development (GCRD) Policy Credits by the World Bank totaling $1 billion, and the ADB’s ongoing funding for climate projects in Bangladesh.
The RSF arrangement and the GCRD credits support reforms to strengthen Bangladesh’s resilience to climate change, advance the decarbonization of the economy, and manage transition risks.
Specific reforms supported by the IMF program and the GCRD aim to integrate climate and green dimensions into public procurement and public planning, incentivize locally led climate actions and scale up a national disaster risk financing strategy.
Other reforms include adopting a periodic formula-based price adjustment mechanism for petroleum products, tackling air pollution and GHG emissions, enhancing the efficiency and resilience of water supply and sanitation services, and for Bangladesh Bank to update the Policy on Green Bond Financing.
These reforms and the collaboration with partners are expected to create an enabling environment that will help attract additional climate finance.
Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries to the impact of climate change and has been a forerunner in climate change adaptation and disaster risk preparedness.
To enhance government coordination, the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change has formed the National Committee for Environment and Climate Change (NCECC) as an inter-ministerial platform headed by the Prime Minister.
The NCECC will monitor implementation progress of the national climate strategies, provide guidance on and solutions to the problems for implementing the strategies and consider implementation of decisions taken at the United Nations’ conferences on climate change.
Development partners are pledging their support to the Government of Bangladesh’s climate agenda in many ways.
The Government of Bangladesh and its MDB and bilateral development partners are setting up the BCDP to implement the country’s climate agenda.
The BCDP will generate a robust pipeline of climate projects, integrated with a financing strategy.
This integrated approach together with the cooperation between the GoB and the partners is expected to integrate climate risks into fiscal planning, improve the sensitivity of public investment management to climate-related challenges, bolster climate-related risk management for financial institutions including climate stress testing, strengthen and institutionalize the monitoring and reporting of climate-related spending, and fortify disaster risk reduction and management.
To improve the bankability of priority projects, a multi-donor/multi-sector project preparation facility will be established within the BCDP.
This will also support scalability to attract private investments across Bangladesh, mainstreaming projects in development plans, while reducing the financial burden on the public sector.
The ADB along with the World Bank are preparing the facility, which will enhance coordination jointly with other development partners.
The ADB is processing a $400 million policy-based loan to Bangladesh in 2023. About 53 percent of the ADB’s 2023 project financing ($1.9 billion) has been allocated towards climate financing so far, and the ADB is committed to allocating more than half of its 2024-26 allocation for Bangladesh ($5.5 billion) in support of the GoB’s climate agenda.
