Climate resilience and food security cannot be ensured without protecting land, Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Abdul Awal Mintoo has said. Land must be seen not merely as an environmental cost but as an economic and development priority, he said.

He spoke for Bangladesh at a ministerial dialogue on "innovative financing mechanisms for healthy land and drought resilience", held on Finance Day of the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17) in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on Monday, 24 August. The ministry gave the information in a press release.

The minister said Bangladesh is implementing various initiatives to reduce land degradation. Soil fertility, forest land, waterlogging, hill erosion, coastal salinity and river erosion are being given importance in national planning.

Bangladesh is turning agriculture into a technology-based, climate-resilient sector and expanding credit and farm loan support for farmers, he said. He urged multilateral development banks and development finance institutions to use guarantees, first-loss capital and blended finance to ensure effective funding for smallholders and land restoration.

Highlighting Bangladesh's own efforts, he said the country has funded climate and land resilience domestically through the Climate Change Trust Fund since 2009. More than $495 million has been provided through this fund, one of the first of its kind among developing countries.

With this funding, he said, 12 new stress-tolerant crop varieties have been developed and more than 19,400 tonnes of drought- and salinity-tolerant seed distributed to farmers. But current demand exceeds the fund's annual allocation.

International finance should work not as a substitute for national effort but to help fill the existing funding gap, the minister said. He proposed innovative mechanisms such as debt-for-nature and climate swaps and green bonds for land restoration.

Such finance could strengthen managed aquifer recharge of groundwater in the Barind region, agriculture, forestry, climate-smart agriculture and the restoration of coastal mangroves under the National Green Mission to plant 250 million saplings, he said.

On regional cooperation, he said changes in upstream water flows increase the risks of salinity and drought in a delta country like Bangladesh. Stronger transboundary water sharing among countries of common river basins, and joint efforts to share data on water scarcity and land degradation, are therefore needed.

"Bangladesh is ready to give and receive cooperation. We want commitments that are specific, well financed and time-bound, so that land finance moves from the margins to the centre of decision-making," the minister said.

Mongolian President Khurelsukh Ukhnaa opened the high-level session of UNCCD COP17. Mongolian Foreign Minister and COP17 President Battsetseg Batmunkh, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J Mohammed, UNCCD Executive Secretary Yasmine Fouad and ministers and heads of delegations from various countries attended.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.