He said, “Sadly, the climate financing committed and available to date is seriously inadequate. This is further complicated by the absence of an internationally agreed definition of ‘climate financing’ and its accounting methods.”
The Prime Minister said she was part of a closed-door meeting of leaders to find a last-minute solution at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009 and realized that obtaining international climate finance would be very difficult.
After returning home, he took the initiative to establish the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund to undertake domestic adaptation projects.
“Bangladesh is now considered a living laboratory of locally led climate adaptation,” he said.
He said Bangladesh has so far implemented about 800 projects at a cost of $480 million, all from its own resources.
“However, this is still inadequate compared to the $7-8 billion we need each year to implement our national adaptation plan,” he said.
To put things in perspective, he said, the current financing requirement for mitigation as per all Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) is estimated to be about $6 trillion by 2030.
For adaptation, he said, it amounts to $215-387 billion per year by 2030. It is clear that the growing financing gap is exacerbating the global climate crisis.
Sheikh Hasina said that COP28 in Dubai started on a positive note with the operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund.
He said, “We are pleased that $792 million has been committed to the Fund. We expect additional pledges to be made to allow the Fund to fulfill its mandate.”