Bangladesh did little to cause climate change, yet it is borrowing heavily to cope with it and to move to clean energy. Pinaki Roy reports in The Daily Star on a recent study by the Dhaka-based research group Change Initiative (CI).
The study finds that climate finance for Bangladesh's energy sector from 2002 to 2023 totalled about 2.54 billion dollars, of which 92 percent, or 2.34 billion, came as loans and only 8 percent, about 203 million, as grants. "Forcing countries that are not responsible for climate change to borrow to deal with it is not assistance but another blow written into the terms of the contract," said M Zakir Hossain Khan, Change Initiative's chief executive.
A World Bank report of 22 July says only 1.5 percent of the electricity supplied to the national grid comes from renewable sources, while the Renewable Energy Policy 2025 targets 20 percent of energy from renewables by 2030 and 30 percent by 2040.
Delivering the third mitigation part of Bangladesh's nationally determined contribution (NDC) submitted to the UN will cost 116.18 billion dollars, 90.23 billion of it dependent on international support. The National Adaptation Plan (2023-2050) identifies 113 major interventions across 11 climate-vulnerable regions, costing more than 230 billion dollars, about three-quarters of it needed by 2040, including integrated management of coastal polders, sea dykes and cyclone shelters.
Khan said Bangladesh is financing its clean-energy transition mainly with loans, with few grants or risk-sharing investments. By his reckoning the energy sector has received about nine dollars of loans for every dollar of grants, while dependence on imported fossil fuel remains.
Lenders include the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, JICA, the European Investment Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and Germany's KfW; grants have come from the European Union, the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility and the Climate Investment Funds. With COP31 under way, the figures sharpen the question of whether climate finance should come as loans or grants.
Photo: Power Division, Government of Bangladesh / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: The Daily Star
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