Editorial
Our priorities after Copenhagen
Building capacity and ensuring transparency are crucial
THE Daily Star round table on post-Copenhagen priorities on Saturday has clearly brought home to us certain realities we in Bangladesh need to handle where climate change is concerned. In precise terms, now that the accord, however flawed, is there, it is time to move from generalisations to specifics. This is especially true of Bangladesh, one of the countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Indeed, with projections of as much as one-fifth of the country being lost to the ravages wrought by carbon emissions, there is certainly no time to lose. The options are limited or are not there at all. In other words, adaptability is not an option but a necessity for us as also for other vulnerable nations.
Most important from here on, and on an immediate basis, is for Bangladesh and similarly affected countries to fine tune their arguments on dealing with climate change in these post-Copenhagen circumstances and thereby improving their negotiating capacity vis-à-vis the developed world. It is of critical importance that the case for LDCs, indeed for such regions as Africa, be presented forcefully as the Copenhagen accord gets into the implementation stage.
Where Bangladesh is concerned in these coming weeks and months, all the internal preparations necessary to deal with the crisis must be in place. Capacity building in terms of ensuring adequate expertise and technology as well as institutions and the necessary infrastructure must be the fundamental concern today. Trained and efficient manpower is a crucial factor here. The good news here is that the Bangladesh government is already seized of the problem and indeed, as was pointed out at the round table, has mobilised some of its own funds, to the tune of Tk. 700 crore, to handle the climate change threat.
Of bigger import is the matter of the $10 billion per year that the country will be getting over the next three years for purposes of adaptation, plus the $100 billion that will come in after 2020 to help it handle mitigation and adaptation. These funds must be made efficacious and productive use of in improving infrastructure and ensuring adaptability. Priority areas will have to be marked out in order to make certain that the funds will be utilised in well-defined, optimal manner. Most significantly, it will be transparency and accountability that will be called for.
The nation will expect to be kept informed, constantly and continuously, of how and where the funds are being utilised. And that, obviously, can be ensured through bringing together the pool of talent that we have in Bangladesh today, across the spectrum, in the environment region. Every effort must be there to make sure that bureaucratic impediments do not mar the goals we set ourselves and also those we believe are in the interest of our survival as a country.
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