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UK-Bangladesh Confce Roving Correspondent Britain and Bangladesh on Wednesday appealed to the governments around the world for more money and a new global deal to combat catastrophic consequences of climate change. Britain also pledged $133 million in aid to help Bangladesh prepare for impacts of the climate change
The UK's International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander and commerce adviser AB Mirza Azizul Islam signed a communiqué at the conference room of the Royal Geographical Society at end of the inaugural function of the UK-Bangladesh Climate Change conference here.
The two countries recognised that the green house gas emission should be peaked within the next 10 to 15 years and then the emission should be cut by 50 percent of the 1990 level by 2050.
Both Bangladesh, the chair of the 50-member group of the least developed countries (LDCs), and Britain, a member of the highly industrialised G-8 group, have said the temperature rise must remain within 2 degrees Celsius to prevent the dangerous impacts of climate change.
'We, however, recognise that ambitious actions by developed countries alone will not be enough. As recognised in the Bali Action Plan, developing countries will also need to do their bit, taking into account the vast differences that exist within that group, for example, between those countries with large economies and strong institutional capacity, and the LDCs and SIDS,' said the communiqué, distributed among journalists.
Moving from its rigid position against the developed countries, Bangladesh at the conference urged the developing countries to play their role, which means urging the big developing economies like China and India to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
As per the climate change agreement signed in 1997 and known as Kyoto Protocol, the developing countries like China and India have virtually no legal binding for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global temperature rise resulting in climate change.
The Kyoto Protocol puts some legal obligations for the developed countries to reduce green house gases to stop sea level rise which will inundate, if not checked, 8 percent of Bangladesh land by 2050.
Alexander urged the international community to contribute to helping the poor countries like Bangladesh in adapting to climate change.
"Bangladesh cannot finance the required scale of adaptation with its own resources.
"Taking into account Bangladesh's vulnerability to climate change and its resource constraints, the UK will support Bangladesh in implementing its climate change strategy and action plan with £75 million, in the form of a grant, over the next five years," Alexander told journalists after the signing.
The funds will be used on measures such as protecting houses, schools and farms against flooding, and introducing new crop strains.
The new grant will be used for adaptation of Bangladeshi people through the newly-floated Bangladesh Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) in which the grants of other donors will be deposited, the spokesperson for the Department for International Development, which leads the British government's fight against world poverty, told bdnews24.com in London .
Denmark's Minister for International Cooperation Ulla Tornaes in her speech said the poor people contribute less carbon but they suffer hard for climate change.
"Developed countries have obligation to contribute to the developing countries to adapt to climate change,' Tornaes said.
She announced that her country would increase its contribution to the adaptation fund from 100 million Danish currency to 500 million over the next three years.
Prof Muzaffer Ahmed also spoke at the opening function.
Bangladesh outlined its national strategy on climate adaptation, styled Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan, to help it reduce and cope with the climate crisis.
"Climate change is today's crisis, not tomorrow's risk and is already affecting millions of people in Bangladesh," observed Alexander at the high-profile conference.
"But adaptation on-the-ground is not enough. We believe more must be done at a global level," he added.
"But Bangladesh is resilient, and is setting an example to other vulnerable countries with its innovative approach to adapting to the changing climate," the UK minister said.
Alexander and Azizul urged the international community to strike a deal in Denmark next year on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on curbing emissions of climate warming carbon gases from burning fossil fuels for power and transport.
Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, but negotiations for an expanded and extended successor are barely moving despite the deadline at the end of 2009.
"We want a new sense of urgency to support Bangladesh in our search for a better tomorrow," said Mirza Azizul.
"This is why today, we are presenting our Climate Change Action Plan and calling upon the international community to assist Bangladesh by providing predictable, long-term financing for this plan and also by pushing for a meaningful agreement at Copenhagen."
"... More money will be needed to combat impacts of climate change - that's indisputable - and it should be new money, because it should be compensation for changes we've caused through our industrialisation," said Azizul.
Some of it will explore ways in which Bangladesh could make use of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a Kyoto Protocol designed to use money from the international carbon market to aid low-carbon development in poorer nations.
Floods are a part of life for the Bangladesh and the problem is expected to become more serious as global warming induces a strengthening of tropical storms and the monsoon.
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