Backtracking on its stance not to take loan from lending agencies, the government is now eagerly waiting for receiving credit from the World Bank for climate adaptation programmes in the country. The government has already applied for a loan of $60 million and a grant worth $50 million from the WB’s Pilot Project of Climate Resilience (PPCR), Arastoo Khan, Additional Secretary of Economic Relations Division, said.
However, the Ministry of Environment and Forest, which is the responsible authority to tackle the climate change impacts on the country, has denied seeking any loan from the WB.
The state minister for the ministry Hasan Mahmud earlier repeatedly said that the government will never go for taking any credit to tackle the fallout of climate change.
But the ERD official said Bangladesh has no alternative but to go for taking loan from lending agencies to fight climate change impacts.“Talking against credit for climate fund is unrealistic for a country like Bangladesh. Such a cheap sentiment is meaningless as we lack ability to protect our country from any disaster”, he addedHe also said the grant money which will come from PPCR will be spent on climate adaptation while the credit will be uses for environmental improvement like setting up of Cluster Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP).
Development workers have already called on the government to stop its move to take the loan as it (government) earlier announced that they will never take any credit except compensation from the industrialised countries responsible for climate change.Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, a climate activist and chief coordinator of EquityBD, told the daily sun that the government’s decision is completely against the country’s interest.If the government receives the loan it will lose credibility to international community as Bangladesh plays leading role in climate negotiation, he observed.The United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which set up a fund named ‘Global Green Fund’ of $30 billion at Cancun conference in Mexico last year.The developed countries also agreed to provide $100 billion to the fund every year till 2020 and the World Bank has been assigned to work as temporary trustee to manage the Fund.But the World Bank is now trying to establish itself as a climate financing source instead of working as channel to manage the fund, Rezaul Karim Chowdhury claimed.Moreover, the government applied for another loan of $515 million including $300 million from International Development Association of the WB and $215 million from ADB.
Bangladesh will get $50 million in grant in exchange for receiving $515 million loan which is only 9 per cent of total loan. The government will spend the money on climate resilience and food security, development of coastal embankment and tree plantation in 12 polders, coastal climate-resilient water supply and improvement, capacity building for mainstreaming resilience and knowledge management and feasibility study on climate-resilient housing, according to the annual report of PPCR.The PPCR has been created to help highly vulnerable countries to pilot and demonstrate ways to integrate climate risk and resilience into core development planning.This PPCR is a portion of Climate Investment Fund (CIF) of World Bank. The donor countries have already provided $972 million to the fund in September 2010. Only one-sixth of the money will be disbursed as grant to the vulnerable countries while the remaining amount will be given to them as loan, according to the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad).
News Source: The Daily Sun