Tk 700 crore for climate change fund

The Government has allocated Tk 700 crore in the Climate Change Fund constituted with the Government's own resources for the fiscal 2009-2010 to counter the impending disaster.Minister for Finance AMA Muhit announced the allocation in the proposed budget placed in Parliament yesterday.The allocation, which is more than double than the allocation given for the current fiscal, was approved earlier by the Cabinet in principle. The immediate past Caretaker Government had allocated Tk 300 crore in the Climate Change Fund for the current fiscal.The Finance Minister in his budget speech said the creation of a Multi-Donor Trust Fund with support from donors is in progress.The proposed Fund received a commitment of US$ 97.9 million from the Governments of UK and Denmark," he said.The Minister said Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has proposed to provide Tk 490 crore as budgetary support during the next three years, to cope with the environment related disasters. At the same time, he said Japan has proposed to contribute Tk 700 crore from their Japan Debt Cancellation Fund (JDCF) facility in managing the risk due to climate change.The Finance Minister referred that the super cyclone Sidr and the two consecutive floods of 2007 severely affected lives of the people. The cyclone Aila which ravaged many parts of Southwestern Bangladesh last month once again reminded us how riskprone we are to natural calamities. "The rise of sea water level due to the melting of ice from the Himalayas and North Pole is causing saline water intrusion through our estuaries in the coastal areas. The adverse effect of climate change is directly affecting our agriculture, fisheries and bio-diversity," he observed.The Minister said the disaster and calamity due to climate change cannot be reversed. "Therefore, we should aim to mitigate dislocation and sufferings, and to build the capacity to adapt lives and livelihoods in the coastal areas. As part of this aim, we shall complete soon the review of medium and long term strategies that have been prepared to prevent the disasters relating to climate change," he added. The rehabilitation of the displaced people of the affected areas is of prime importance because nearly 2 crore people will be displaced by 2050 due to climate change. Hence, as a basic strategy, we may put forward the demand to establish our rights in obtaining the status of global citizen for our affected people, he said. He said the government is committed to prepare a detailed action plan designed to face the disasters due to climate change. The main focus of our activities would be to carry out regular dredging of rivers and canals, strengthening the embankments along coastal areas and establishing adequate number of cyclone shelters, reduce air pollution caused by diesel-run vehicles, control environment pollution due to industrialisation, extend and preserve forestry and develop sufficient environmental experts, he said.