Attaining environmental sustainability

Dr. Atiur Rahman
Governor, Bangladesh Bank :
The climate award initiative resonates very well with Bangladesh Bank’s (BB’s) initiative of mainstreaming socially responsible financing in our financial sector, of which green financing for environmental sustainability is one of the two main thrust areas, alongside inclusivity. The green banking thrust of this initiative has put in place environmental risk assessment drills seeing to it that the projects financed include necessary mitigation measures. BB is also supporting green financing with a low cost refinancing line for lenders to greening initiatives like renewable energy generation, effluent treatment, and replacement of traditional output processes and practices with low-emission, energy efficient options. Besides, BB has also led a major modernization of the country’s financial sector IT infrastructure including the payments system; spawning and hastening rapid growth of low-carbon paperless processes including online clearing and settlements, electronic fund transfers, and mobile phone/smart card based off-branch financial service delivery.
Our government has for some years now been allocating outlays of Taka 7.5 billion annually in national budgets for climate change related projects; the government’s development strategy and plan documents clearly articulate the high priority of effectively mitigating and coping with Bangladesh’s vulnerabilities to global warming driven sea level rise and other climate change threats. The government has also put in place tariff and tax rebates for renewable energy generation and other greening initiatives. These resources and facilitations are being augmented further by support from external official development partners, multilateral forums, and private sector philanthropies.
Our local financial and non financial businesses are also adding their mite from their social responsibility oriented resource outlays. More importantly, they have begun innovating and adopting lower-emission, more energy efficient processes and practices in place of earlier higher emission, less efficient ones.
Positive results of these broad-based social engagements in looking for and adopting green options are already evident. Solar power usage has extended beyond off-grid household lighting to such purposes as irrigation and battery powering of motorized rickshaws; mobile phone based financial services have taken off in a big way; cow dung/biomass processing plants spreading in rural households are producing organic fertilizers besides gas as household fuel, cows tended by households for the biogas plants are also producing meat, milk and other dairy products.
These are but only the beginnings of the ensuing vast transformation of the entire gamut of our economic activities and lifestyles to green, energy efficient options; clearly offering our businesses and their youthful creative manpower with unbounded potential for innovating greening approaches that are affordable and optimal for our circumstances.
Bangladesh has consciously opted for low carbon development path, despite her current carbon emission level being very low both by global and regional norms. Proactive adoption of low-emission energy efficient options in our economic activities and lifestyles will pay us richly in global ranking on environmental credentials. Our businesses have amply proven their innovative capacity and ingenuity in putting Bangladesh at the leading edge of global apparels trade in a few decades; we can look forward to their repeating the same in innovating affordable and appropriate green options in diverse areas of our expanding economic activities. According to BBS data, Bangladesh’s per capita GNI has already crossed the lower middle income country group threshold in FY13; sustained spurt of innovations in green output processes and practices will surely hasten our reaching of upper middle income country group per capita GNI threshold, by end of the next decade or earlier.  
Sustained contribution of export sector, supported by international financial institutions like HSBC has been playing a key role in realizing this dream. As noted by James Emmett, global head of trade and receivables finance of HSBC that Bangladesh’s exports to Asia (third highest destination after EU and the USA) will double to 15 percent of total shipments by 2020 as China and India are set to become key markets for the country due to a rise of the middle class in Asia, particularly in China.
Congratulations to today’s awardees for their exemplary efforts in transforming traditional output practices and processes to green options, in disseminating knowhow, and in fostering community engagement in greening initiatives. Let us all draw inspiration from them in committing our resource support and engagement in the greening challenges they have embarked upon. I would urge our financial sector colleagues to accord higher green financing priority to sectors with higher potential impact, like carbon absorbing agriculture and plantation, low carbon water way and railway mass transit, solar and wind power and so forth. BB stands ready to scale up her refinance and other green financing support measures as necessary.