Bangladesh urges climate centre in Dhaka

By: Pinaki Roy on December 5th, 2008

Pinaki Roy from Poznan, Poland

Bangladesh, on the second day of the UN Climate Change Conference here, has demanded that an international climate change adaptation centre under UN auspices should be set up in Dhaka. The centre would research ways of adapting to climate change.

Bangladesh made its demand at the vision-sharing meeting of the G-77 Group on behalf of the least developed countries (LDCs) yesterday.

The Bangladesh delegation said climate change funding, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), must be in addition to the existing official development assistance (ODA) commitments of 0.7 percent of industrialised countries’ gross national product (GNP).

Bangladesh’s proposal also said current arrangements, known as responsibility-based mechanisms, must be revised to make the contributions of developed countries mandatory.

The Bangladesh delegation asked as well for a mechanism to be developed, with the help of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to create an index on the vulnerability of people in each country to climate change.

It demanded the creation of an effective environment for climate-change adaptation, nationally, regionally and internationally, with the support of appropriate institutions.

“We proposed the setting up of the head office of the International Adaptation Centre in Dhaka,” said a Bangladeshi government official. However, all parties attending the conference have to agree on this.

Bangladesh urged a long-term global goal on tackling climate change. Its proposals also said the goal should be determined according to the undertakings of developed countries on emission cuts, technology transfer, finance and capacity building.

Mr Reazuddin, director technical of the department of environment, presented the proposal at the meeting.

Meanwhile, Oxfam International in a report yesterday estimated that more than $50 billion could be raised each year if developed countries bought, at auction, the right to only 7.5 percent of their emission units.

The money should be handed to a new multilateral adaptation finance mechanism under the UNFCCC. Oxfam yesterday released the report, called “Turning Carbon into Gold”, which also suggested that other new finance mechanisms in the aviation and shipping sectors could generate another $28 billion.

Around 9,000 participants including government officials, NGO workers, scientists, and journalists from 190 countries have gathered in Poznan to attend the two-week-long conference.