The World Bank has approved a $250 million financing package to help Bangladesh strengthen environmental management and promote private-sector participation in green investment.
The credit, deriving from the World Bank's International Development Association programme for concessional financing, has a 30-year term with a five-year grace period, according to a statement of the WB on Friday.
Successful implementation of the project will help the country tackle key pollution issues, benefitting over 21 million people living in greater Dhaka and beyond.
The Bangladesh Environmental Sustainability and Transformation (BEST) Project will support the Department of Environment to strengthen its technical and administrative capacity.
The project will also support to improve environmental regulations and enforcement to curb pollution and improve environmental quality.
The project will pilot new financing mechanisms to promote green investments in targeted sectors.
It will also establish a Green Credit Guarantee Scheme to incentivize the financial sector to support green investments to reduce air pollution.
"Bangladesh's rapid economic growth and urbanization have come at a high environmental cost in terms of pollution. Not only that the pollution is impacting our health, but also it is eroding the country's economic competitiveness," the statement quoted World Bank Acting Country Director for Bangladesh and Bhutan Dandan Chen as saying.
"The World Bank has been a long-standing partner to Bangladesh in tackling environmental challenges. This project will strengthen the country's environmental institutions to better control pollution and promote sustainable development," said the WB country head.
The project will help construct four vehicle inspection centers using private-public partnership modality to inspect about 46,000 vehicles annually.
An E-waste management facility will be set up to process 3,500 tonnes of e-waste annually. The project will help reduce over 1.0 million tonnes of Green House Gas emissions from targeted sources.
"In newspapers, we regularly see reports on Dhaka's high level of air pollution. World Bank estimate shows that in 2019, air pollution and lead exposure are responsible for more than one-fifth of the deaths in Bangladesh, costing about 12 per cent of the country's GDP," said Jiang Ru, World Bank Senior Environment Specialist and task team leader for the project.
"Strong environmental regulations and strict environmental enforcement will incentivize the private sector to invest in pollution control and green growth and thus help the country to achieve its target of net-zero emissions by 2050."
The project will also set up a first-ever network of 22 continuous surface water quality monitoring stations to start monitoring of water quality of Dhaka rivers and targeted international rivers in real time.
It will also establish continuous water quality monitoring stations to ensure environmental compliance of selected industrial effluent treatment plants.
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