Home ›› 23 Oct 2022 ›› Special Supplement
Heat waves have become more frequent, more intense, and last longer because of human-induced climate change.
The world has already warmed by about 1.1C since the industrial era began, and temperatures will keep rising unless governments around the world make steep cuts to emissions.
The current warming trend is different, because it is clearly the result of human activities since the mid-1800s, and is proceeding at a rate not seen over many recent millennia. Most of the warming occurred in the past 40 years, with the seven most recent years being the warmest.
Global climate changes in different eras
While Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history, the current warming is happening at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years. This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age.
Carbon dioxide from human activities is increasing about 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last Ice Age. Global sea level rose about 8 inches (20 centimeters) in the last century.
Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world – including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska, and Africa.
Around 900 CE, things started to go wrong for the Mayans, overpopulation and strain on resources, violent conflict with other nations-extensive drought, ruining crops and cutting off drinking water supplies and led to gradual extinction of civilization.
Moreover, more than 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (currently Iraq, north-east Syria and south-east Turkey) also faced the 300-year-long drought around 2,200 BCE. In 1930 the global population was only 2 billion, after 90 years that has reached almost 8 billion.
Infrastructure-based development pathway is a colonial effort, but the colonised states including LDCs are blindly driving the devastating development dream, ignoring nature-driven sustainable economic advancement.
Following obsolete development pathway to achieve sustainable development is not only a suicidal philosophy, but also inefficient and unsustainable.
In the name of modernisation and so-called industrial revolution, in 1712 the British ironmonger Thomas Newcomen invented the first widely used steam engine, paving the way for the Industrial Revolution and industrial scale use of coal.
This is the root of the climate change impacts at present age. In 1927, carbon emissions from burning fossil fuel and industries reached one billion tonnes per year.
Global temperature – which increased 10 Celsius from 1850 – is still rising, and another 1.5°C increase could put between 20 per cent and 30 per cent of animal species on the fast track to extinction.
The planet is losing around 9.5 million cubic metres of water every year. Human civilisation could end by 2050 due to the destabilising societal and environmental factors caused by a rapidly warming planet.
Depriving several nations for the centuries giving few generations comfort through global changes is irreversible inequitable. Natural-based sustainable advancement is only sustainable, and scholars are carrying the sign of civilisations, not the structures.
However, the fate of the climate victims is still uncertain as the UNHCR and IMO have opined that “Climate Refugees” or “Environmental Refugees” have no legal basis in international refugee law under the 1952 Refugee Convention.
Around 46 per cent of the world live in climate vulnerable countries. Climate displacement can push a person into poverty by stripping them from home, profession, and network.
Around 100 million to be poor in developing countries could be pushed into poverty by CC by 2030.
Grant-based climate finance: A faded dream of LDCs and debt trap
The Paris Agreement has defined that financial resources should aim to achieve a balance between adaptation and mitigation, and the GCF created a provision of 50:50 (Article 9.1).
Climate finance should be Country-driven strategies, and the priorities and needs of developing country parties, especially the climate vulnerable (for example CVF) and have significant capacity constraints, such as the LDCs and SIDS, considering the need for public and grant-based resources for adaptation (Article 9.4).
However, what agreed in the UNFCCC to provide compensation under the Polluters’ Pay Principle has been ignored in the PA and no universal definition of climate finance has been framed yet.
Developed countries promised in 2009 to provide $100 billion each year from 2020 as “new” and “additional” to ODA. However, till date, only around $42 billion has been committed by the developed countries, and out of them around 60 percent has been disbursed till 2021.
From the Green Climate Funds, around $10.6 billion has been mobilised in the last nine years, whereas the demand was $30.2 billion and total disbursement was $1.7 billion.
There is a question about proper measurement of climate finance considering “Rio marker,” and “New and additional to ODA.” However, estimation shows a bleak picture. Until 2021, adaptation received only 21 percent of climate financing.
India, Indonesia, China and Vietnam have together received 56 per cent of the approved funds for Asia since 2003, and mitigation finance accounts for 62 per cent of finance from the multilateral funds in the region ($3 billion).
As per the Copenhagen Accord, the fund should be grants, but 74 per cent is loan. According to the OECD, around $80 billion was generated, but most of the figure is loan.
An increase of at least 590 per cent in annual climate finance is required by 2030 to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change.
Share of Global South government resources dedicated to foreign debt repayment tripled from 2011 to 2020. Sixty-three vulnerable countries’ debt burden would be increased from 133 per cent (2011) to 216 per cent in 2022.
All funding for LDCs should be humanitarian and development funding outside the UNFCCC process for efforts to address human mobility associated with the adverse impacts of climate change, such as through multilateral funds, the Migration Multi-Partner Trust Fund, social protection safety nets, and anticipatory financing mechanisms.
Adaptation to climate or uncertainty
LDCs may have received only $5.9 billion in primary adaptation finance between 2014 and 2018. Most verified LDC primary adaptation finance is provided by MDBs – as loans, not grants.
Note here that as the disasters are intensifying, adaptation costs will rise to $140 billion to 300 billion annually in LDCs by 2030. Among the disbursed funds, only around 21 per cent of international climate finance goes to adaptation and resilience.
While adaptation projects and programmes in the region receive only about a third or USD 1 billion of mitigation financing amounts, show figures regarding top 10 recipient countries by amounts approved from 2003-2019.
Up to 2030 estimated demand of the adaptation funds would be around $280 billion for only Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, and Maldives, but those countries together received only $5.9 billion of AF in LDCs during the five-year period (2014-2018).
Only India, Indonesia, China and Vietnam have together received 56 per cent of the funding approved for Asia since 2003-2019.
Loss and damage finance: An empty vessel
A World Bank study in 2021 claimed that in absence of concrete climate and development actions, climate change could lead more than 216 million people on the planet to migrate or be internally displaced by 2050.
Bangladesh might drive 37 percent (13.3 million) of the region’s projected climate migrants in the pessimistic reference scenario.
The Internal Displaced Monitoring Center (IDMC) claimed that “Bangladesh, China, India and the Philippines together recorded more than 4 million disaster displacements.” Nearly 1,900 disasters triggered 24.9 million new displacements across 140 countries and territories in 2019.
The Warsaw International Mechanism was established to address loss and damage associated with impacts of climate change, including extreme events and slow onset events, in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change at COP19 (November 2013) in Warsaw of Poland.
However, no fund has been mobilised yet till date. In reverse, G20 countries are providing around $130 billion per year as public subsidy to fossil fuels.
This subsidy should be mobilised to promote renewable energy in the LDCs, including Bangladesh, and it will not only contribute to reducing carbon emission, but also enhance the energy crisis that has been jeopardized further by ongoing conflicts between Russia and Ukraine.
Bangladesh should engage with LDCs and EU, USA to divert funds as soon as possible as grant-based climate finance, and at least 50 per cent of the committed funds should be delivered directly to affected communities through innovative funding mechanisms.
To rehabilitate the climate induced displaced people an independent, stand-alone legal protocol should be adopted and integrated subsidised climate-risk-insurance should be mobilized for the climate victims.
Under the current economic recession and reduced capacity of public expenses, LDC should identify the effective mechanism to integrate private insurers to secure the lives and livelihoods.
The carbon market or carbon financing mechanism with other V20 mechanisms has the potential to raise between US$1.37 billion and USD 4.5 billion. Without adaptation to storms and sea-level rise, disaster-related economic losses can go as high as 200 percent of the size of a national economy.
Climate finance for climate victims of Bangladesh
According to the Mujib Climate Prosperity Plan, “Due to heat stress, 3.83 million full-time job losses by 2030; sea level rise and coastal erosion will cause of 17 per cent loss of land surface, 30 per cent loss of food production by 2050, and one-third of Bangladesh population at risk of displacement.
“Moreover, due to climate change and carbon-intensive loss 150,000 additional mortality-yearly average by 2030, and 55 million people affected by 2030.”
Nearly 26 million people are currently exposed to very high (>1500 μS cm-1 50) salinity in shallow groundwater in coastal Bangladesh, and from 2012 to 2050, freshwater river area is expected to decrease from 40.8 per cent to 17.1 per cent – 19.7 per cent under different sea-level rise scenarios in the southwest coastal zone of Bangladesh (IPCC, 6AR, 2021).
Human beings are acting so irrationally, we are destroying the core sustainable elements of the survival of the planet and its resources, including lives. An economic value of life-time consumption of oxygen of any individual of Bangladesh is around Tk 850 crore, and value of lifelong drinking water used by an individual is around Tk 4 crore.
However, we are polluting our life-saving resources and due to pollution (air, water, sound and soil) annual economic losses of Bangladesh alone is estimated at around Tk 3.25 lack (Change Initiative, 2022).
Bangladesh needs at least $75 billion by 2030 for climate finance from external sources.
However, due to unavailability of funds for resettlement, how to manage relocation from community owned lands, how to value privately owned land to be abandoned, and the potential for loss and damage claims; and limited public budgets allocated to coastal adaptation and relying on international donor aid; and existing institutions often lacking the human capacity and resources needed for coastal adaptation.
Developed countries and multilateral implementing entities have approved around $652 million up to 2022 and disbursed only up to 27 per cent of committed funds; and among the approved funds 54 per cent was loan.
On the other hand, Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund (BCCTF) allocated around USD500 million from 2009 to 2021. Moreover, due to misuse of public funds as well as global economic crisis future climate finance would be squeezed.
There is no focused policy or strategy to address the human rights concerns across all the policy, process and practices.
In collaboration with the CVF and LDCs, Bangladesh will lead to form a Climate Actions Fund for Asia and Pacific (CAFAP) with the funds from GCF, AF, MDBs, and Philanthropic. Under which a meaningful and time-bound strategy and actions would be derived.
Direct resources, such as funding and capacity building, and support to Community-led Resilience (CLR) against all man-made and natural disasters will be feasible and cost-effective options.
To ensure sustainable finance, Bangladesh should identify the innovative financing tools (for example pollution/emission tax, Zakah, CSR) for disaster risk financing, and exploit the potential of how utilise the abundant water carried by floods each year, energy generation from lightning and cyclone, generating osmotic/blue energy from falling river water to the sea.
M Zakir Hossain Khan is a climate finance and environmental policy analyst, serving as the Chief Executive of Change Initiative. He can be reached at [email protected].
