‘National mechanism a must to tackle climate losses, damages’

Establishing a national mechanism is crucial for the climate vulnerable countries like Bangladesh in a bid to tackle the losses and damages occurring due to natural calamities.

Climate experts came up with the statement while attending a virtual dialogue on Sunday, ahead of the upcoming COP26.

The virtual dialogue titled “Bangladesh’s expectation from COP26” was jointly organised by Centre for Policy Dialogue and International Centre for Climate Change and Development.

The experts also stressed the need for climate adaptation financing, which is being transformed into a mitigation fund.

However, being a country, Bangladesh has nothing to gain individually from this global climate conference as the forum is basically a collective initiative and largely depends on the whim of the developed countries, they opined.

Fahmida Khatun, executive director of CPD and Mizan Khan, deputy director of ICCCAD jointly presented a key-note paper at the virtual dialogue.

The keynote identified five-key issues with more focus on how to face loss and damage during natural calamities frequently occurring in the wake of adverse effects of global warming.

Bangladesh frequently faced severe cyclones and its devastating consequences in recent times with a maximum economic loss of $ 8963 billion since 1900’s while typical cyclones and storms caused 90 per cent of that damage, states the key note.

 “Setting up such a loss and damage secretariat will be discussed in the upcoming COP26,” said Ziaul Haque, director of The Department of Environment and also a negotiator from the Bangladesh side.

Loss and damage has been a long-standing issue since in 2013 at COP-19, the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with climate impact was established with an objective to address loss and damage associated with the climate change effects for developing countries. Article 8 of the Paris agreement in 2015 also reaffirmed the loss and damage mechanism.

Commitment of carbon neutrality from major carbon emitting countries, scaling up climate funds, ensuring the bigger share of climate funds toward adaptation,  and finalising the Paris rule book to ensure accountability are the major issues, among others, to get priority at the COP26, reads the key note.

Another important issue, which is violated the most, is the pattern of funding, will also get importance. Half of the climate fund is supposed to go for adaptation while the rest half for mitigation.

“Only 20 per cent funds come for adaptation while 80 per cent goes to mitigation purposes, ‘’ said Saleemul Haq, director of ICCCAD, who is also a globally acclaimed climate scientist.

“Since we are not at all a decision maker and similarly we are not in a position of influencing any decision, we have nothing but to accept the decisions made at such a global platform,” he said.

He also emphasised the role of the private sector to overcome the challenge of climate change impact.

“Though the developed countries have failed to fulfill their pledge of 100 billion each year from 2020, they are now fixing another target of $500 billion by 2025.”