Financing the war on climate change

Experts have defined climate change, the menacing global issue, as a change in the statistical nature of weather patterns when the change lasts for an extended period of time (i.e., decades to millions of years). It also refers to a change in average weather conditions, or in the time variation of weather around longer-term average conditions (i.e., more or fewer extreme weather events).
Scientists are actively working to understand the past and future climate patterns by using observations and theoretical models. A climate record - extending deep into the earth's past - has been assembled, and continues to be built up, based on geological evidence from borehole temperature profiles, cores removed from deep accumulations of ice, flora and fauna records, glacial processes, stable-isotope and other analyses of sediment layers, and records of past sea levels. More recent data are provided by the instrumental record. General circulation models, based on the physical sciences, are often used in theoretical approaches to match past climate data, make future projections, and link causes and effects in climate change.
Bangladesh is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world. Climate change has already had an impact on the lives and livelihoods of people living in coastal areas and in arid and semi-arid regions of the country. Floods, tropical cyclones, storm surges and droughts are becoming more frequent.
The Green Climate Fund is a fund constituted within the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It is an international environmental treaty and is currently the only international climate policy venue with broad legitimacy. The objective of the treaty is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.
The treaty itself set no binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual countries and contains no enforcement mechanisms and is considered legally non-binding. Instead, the treaty provides a framework for negotiating specific international treaties (called protocols) that may set binding limits on greenhouse gases.
UNFCCC was founded as a mechanism to redistribute money from the developed to the developing world in order to assist the developing countries in adaptation and mitigation practices to counter climate change. The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was constituted and entrusted with the responsibility of handling the finance for the purpose. It is intended to be the centrepiece of long-term financing under the UNFCCC, which has set itself a goal of raising $100 billion per year by 2020. The GCF aims 'to make a significant and ambitious contribution to the global efforts towards attaining the goals set by the international community to combat climate change.'
The Fund is also pledged to offer a balanced support to adaptation and mitigation, although there are some concerns amongst the developing countries that inadequate adaptation financing will be offered, in particular if the fund is reliant on leveraging private sector finance. It was formally established in Durban, South Africa in December 2011, although the groundwork was laid in the earlier, non-binding 'Copenhagen Accord' of 2009. Uncertainty over where this money would come from led to the creation of a High Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing (AGF) in 2010. Pledges to the fund reached $9.7 billion on November 28, 2014.
It is widely accepted that the gravest effect of climate change may be on human migration. Last year, 42 million people were newly displaced by rapid-onset natural disasters. Extreme weather events are already displacing many more people than violent conflicts. Slow-onset events like sea-level rise and desertification get even lower global attention. Strong efforts are required to be taken towards correcting this imbalance.  
Bangladesh has stressed on the need for acquiring maximum possible finance from the Green Climate Fund. Understandably so because the process of fighting the climate change is now understood to entail higher expenses than anticipated. Furthermore, the developed countries have so far failed to deliver their promised funds. Bangladesh's role in climate diplomacy, particularly its role as coordinator of 'Group 77 and China' was widely appreciated.   
According to a report published by the United Nations, an amount of $300 to $500 billions are required by the developing countries to combat the effects of climate change. As a result, the amount originally committed by the developed world will have to be doubled. The underdeveloped countries themselves have also increased their allocations in their national budgets to combat climate change. These countries are under serious threats of climate change in the form of calamities like drought, flood etc. every year.
Climate change is no longer an environmental issue only, it is a development issue that needs to be prioritized and addressed accordingly. Bangladesh has invested billions in adaptation measures such as flood management schemes, coastal embankments, cyclone shelters and others. But the journey is far from being over.
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