Bangladesh should see climate budget through a different lens

Every year, Bangladesh's Finance Division prepares and publicly discloses climate-relevant allocations for 25 ministries and divisions. Traced back to the financial year 2015-2016 (i.e., FY2016), it's exciting to see that climate budgets have been 7.3 - 8.6 per cent of the total budget of these agencies and 0.7-0.8 per cent of country's GDP.
In the proposed national budget for the financial year 2023-24 such allocation is more than Tk 370 billion. This amount is 8.99 per cent of 25 government agencies' total budget, 4.86 per cent of the total national budget, and 0.74 per cent of the national GDP. These numbers are quite impressive. The government approved the National Adaptation Plan of Bangladesh (2023-2050) (NAP2050) in October 2022, which will remain crucial for our climate action in decades to come. The NAP2050 is strongly referred to in the climate budget of FY2024 as a significant addition.
Despite these positive notes, the new climate budget reminds us the need for redefining itself. Like the past few years, this year also, the government agencies' allocations are further divided into six themes of the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP): i) food security, social protection and health, ii) comprehensive disaster management, iii) infrastructure, iv) research and knowledge management, v) mitigation and low carbon development, and vi) capacity building and institutional strengthening. The BCCSAP was first approved in 2008, and then was updated in 2009, for 10 years. Since 2018, we have been hearing that this vital document is being revised. The finance minister mentioned this ongoing revision in his recent budget speeches including the one he delivered on June 01, 2023. The latest climate budget FY2024 also notes it in a couple of places. But it seems that after delaying for five years, the revised BCCSAP has lost its place in Bangladesh's climate action.
We now need to move away from defining our climate budget by the BCCSAP's six themes for a number of reasons. Many actions under the BCCSAP themes overlap. For example, maintenance of embankments, cyclone shelters and polders is part of 'infrastructure' theme, but these are also contributing to overall disaster management as well as food security. We find adaptation to drought, salinity, submergence and heat under the 'food security, social protection and health' theme, while adaptation against floods, cyclones, and storm surges under 'infrastructure'. Also, research, knowledge management, capacity building, and institutional strengthening cannot be independent themes as they essentially cut across all other themes and sectors.
It is therefore necessary to rearrange the climate budget against new themes, which will bring in the system-wide, fundamental changes in our society that should be reflected through our climate action. Such transformation can come by following certain protocols or approaches, or implementing certain activities, which will create long-term impacts. But since we are talking about annual climate budget, it's necessary to identify themes which will have both long-term impacts as well as incremental changes that could be measured on an annual basis. Such themes should not only reflect our progressive thinking, but also push us to making basic changes in our operations and governance, and move away from climate budget being a compilation of numbers.
Examples of such themes may include 'Nature-based Solutions' (NbS). This will include budget allocations to activities, such as practicing conservation agriculture and agro-forestry, improving ecosystem services by protecting and restoring forests, mangroves, and wetlands, and sustainably managing natural and urban landscapes to ensure water security, to reduce disaster risks or to lower greenhouse gas emissions as well as to remove them from the atmosphere. IUCN's Global Standard for NbS can help us to identify activities which are truly NbS. The theme 'Locally-led Adaptation' (LLA) will essentially cover inclusive governance, and necessary knowledge, planning, funding, collaboration, and sustainability aspects around it. Actions with and for women, youth, children, elderly, differently-abled persons, and marginalised communities in villages or in urban slums will fall under this theme. We already have eight LLA principles proudly endorsed by 105 government as well as local to global organisations. We now need to operationalise these principles to bring them into practical use.
The theme 'Loss and Damage' (L&D) will bring in disaster risk management interventions, shock-responsive social protection, disaster risk finance including risk transfer mechanisms (e.g., index-based insurance and resilience bond). The 'Green Growth' theme will essentially cover our actions to promote renewable energy in agriculture, industry, transport, and households. But it should also oversee if our shift from fossil fuel-based economy is doing justice to our workforce by following the ILO's 'Just Transition' guidelines and ensuring that such transition is fair and inclusive while creating decent work opportunities for all.
The Finance Division of Bangladesh should work with the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change to bring in climate change experts and relevant ministries to identify other pertinent themes and outline the modality to collect data from these ministries and their divisions. This exercise will also improve the understanding and capacity of our climate-relevant agencies to identify real, effective climate interventions, and avoid the trap of 'mal-adaptation' and 'green washing'. We should start working to this direction from July 2023 to make our climate budget of 2024-2025 a progressive one, and end the Eighth Five-Year Plan period proudly.
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