Home ›› 14 Nov 2021 ›› Editorial
While speaking at a meeting with Scottish parliamentarians Faisal Chowdhury and Sarah Boyak on the sidelines of the ongoing COP-26 in Glasgow of Scotland Bangladesh’s Information and Broadcasting Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud stated it is time that the developed countries should meet their climate pledges. The minister’s view is in line with the rightful demand of developing nations across the globe. The vow to gradually ramp up aid for the Global South to $100 billion (86.5 billion euros) per year by 2020 was first made at the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen by the developed nations. That promise was broken. Figures for 2020 are not yet in, and those who negotiated the pledge don’t agree on accounting methods, but a report last year for the UN concluded that “the only realistic scenarios” showed the $100-billion target was out of reach. The UN Secretary General Antoni Guterres has admitted “We are not there yet”.
According to an agency report carried in this newspaper the minister pointed out that although a few funds have been released from the Global Climate Fund for tackling the harmful effects of climate change, they have been rather inadequate. And no fund is being allocated for long-term climate adaptation. And that is the reason climate vulnerable countries, including Bangladesh, have been struggling to cope with the potentially devastating impacts of climate change.
As the temperature of our planet creeps up, for many the fight against the impacts of climate change has become a matter of life and death. With climate change already significantly affecting people around the world, financial support to help people adapt to these impacts is another huge part of the climate justice conversation. At the core of the concept of climate justice is the recognition that those who are disproportionately impacted by climate change tend not to be those most responsible for causing it. Very rich and heavily industrialised countries have been mostly responsible for climate change, while the adverse effects of the climate crisis fall first and foremost on the poorer countries. It is clear that global emissions need to be cut to avoid dangerous levels of climate change. But at the core of climate justice is the need for fairness in who cuts which emissions, taking into account both historical and present circumstances. Yet the push for a fairer distribution of action is often cast aside by richer countries. The Paris Agreement recognized that that the developed countries will have to reduce their emissions quicker than developing countries. Naturally enough those who have contributed more to this problem have bigger responsibilities than those who contributed less to the problem. It is hardly wise to expect developing countries to keep trying to adapt and develop on their own. As a matter of fact, countries vulnerable to the worst effects of climate change for a long time have been diverting their meagre national resources on climate adaptation, risk reduction or disaster rehabilitation. It has been observed that most of the climate finance is also going to middle-income countries, not the poorest and most-vulnerable countries.
The leading contributors to the global warming have never delivered on their previous commitments. They failed to honour the legally binding Paris Agreement which required its 196 signatory nations to limit global rise in temperature below 2.0 degree Celsius, preferably at 1.5 degrees Celsius, above the pre-industrial level. To achieve this long-term temperature goal, nations would have to make the effort to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as soon as possible in order to achieve a climate neutral world by the middle of 21st century. Although rich nations collectively agreed to the $100-billion goal, they made no formal deal on what each should pay. Instead, countries announce pledges apparently in the hope that others will follow. Despite a recent promise to quadruple donations under Joe Biden, the US remains the lowest climate finance contributor among the rich world. The rich nations have to convince less wealthy ones that they are serious about meeting their pledges. And it also has to be remembered that in 2009, $100 billion sounded like a lot of money, but the recent increasing cataclysmic climate events have made it clear that it's not nearly enough. The developed world must contribute more.
Countries like Bangladesh are in urgent need of the rich nations' support in terms of finance and green technology so that their citizens may adapt to climate change impacts and survive.
