Own Correspondent: Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said that the current level of adaptation financing needs to be at least doubled to eliminate the acute funding imbalance for climate mitigation and adaptation.

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She made the third suggestion during a panel discussion titled 'From Pocket to Planet: Scaling up Climate Finance' at the Munich Security Conference 2024 in Germany on Friday (February 16). Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina presented her six suggestions.

First suggestion: Introducing the Prime Minister, we need to find a solution to climate finance allocations to keep us on the right track. Developed countries are required to meet their commitments of $100 billion annually over the two years to 2025, based on the plan. By the end of this year, we must all agree on a new post-2025 climate finance target of over US$100 billion, based on scientific evidence.

Second suggestion: The world must rid itself of the war and conflict, illegal occupation and brutal killing of unarmed civilians, especially women and children, that the world is witnessing in Gaza and elsewhere. The impact of sanctions and counter-sanctions is felt far beyond the sense of conflict.

Recommendation Three: The current level of adaptation financing needs to be at least doubled to address the acute funding imbalance for climate mitigation and adaptation. To this end, he thanked French President Macron for pledging 1 billion Euros to Bangladesh for assistance in adaptation.

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Recommendation four: The long-standing issue of facilitating access to developing countries' funding from existing international climate funds should be addressed with opportunities to invest in their capacity. In the case of Bangladesh, we have only two institutions eligible to receive funding from the Green Climate Fund and two more are in the process.

Recommendation 5: Reforms in the management of global finance should show meaningful results, especially by increasing access to grants and concessional loans for climate-vulnerable countries to reduce their debt burden.

Sixth suggestion: The Prime Minister said governments need to invest in proper planning, policies and measures to facilitate private capital flows for climate programmes. In addition, international financial institutions should develop innovative, blended financing mechanisms to attract private capital for projects. It is clear that the huge climate finance gap cannot be effectively addressed without the participation of the private sector.

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The Prime Minister said she attended a closed-door meeting of leaders during the COP-15 in Copenhagen in 2009 to find a last-minute solution and realized that securing international climate finance would be difficult. Bangladesh is now considered a laboratory of locally driven climate adaptation. Bangladesh has so far implemented nearly 800 projects at a cost of USD 480 million, all from its own resources. This is still insufficient compared to the $7-8 billion needed per year to implement our National Adaptation Plan.

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Sheikh Hasina said, the next task of the fund is to start releasing money for effective projects. Funding should reach those who need it most. Rebate process should be made easy and flexible. We hope that the Board of Directors of the Fund will give due consideration to the views of LDCs and SEEDS representatives.

Sun News/AN