Strengthening EU-LDC ties for climate-smart development

Quamrul Islam Chowdhury The historical ties between 28-member European Union and 49 least developed countries (LDCs) should be strengthened to achieve climate-smart development. This is also vital for cutting back global carbon emissions to stabilise the global temperature rise below 2 degrees, preferably 1.5 degree, to stop runaway climate change across the world. The landmark Durban Alliance, forged among LDCs, small island developing states and EU countries during 2011 Durban climate conference, should be geared up to chart the roadmap in Warsaw come November. The Alliance delivered the Durban Platform to strike a legally-binding climate agreement in Paris in 2015. The EU Environment and Finance Ministers discussed their common position on October 14-15 in Brussels for this year's round of UN climate talks in Warsaw. They were asked to raise the overall EU mitigation ambition with an early pledge, ramp up support for climate finance, technology and capacity building. Both global and EU aid have decreased for the second year in a row. This only means that vulnerable countries, like Bangladesh, will have to divert their own core budgets to deal with a crisis they have not caused. These were the calls this writer made in his address at the EU Parliament on September 30 in Brussels and October 02 meeting with EU Parliamentarians at the EU Parliament and then with the EU lead negotiators. RAPID CAPACITY BUILDING: Dr. M Asaduzzaman, a senior member of the Bangladesh delegation, urged the EU to facilitate rapid capacity building in developing countries, such as Bangladesh, by mobilising financing quickly. Sharing his own account of climate change, Dr Asad said he was in Brussels at a time when the climate crisis is finally making it back onto the European agenda. Coming off the heels of the release of the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at the end of September, the European Commission is now preparing its proposals for the EU 2030 Climate and Energy Package for later this year. Scientists stated they are 95 per cent sure climate change is exacerbated by humans. Last week's report by the European Environment Agency that the EU has reached its 20 per cent targets seven years early helps frame the ambition the EU can achieve with that new package, he added. At the European Parliament's Development Committee, Dr Asad warned that great progress made in Bangladesh on the Millennium Development Goals, partly thanks to European aid, is at risk of being reversed due to increasing climate impacts. About 15 million people are already in severe risk of flooding in the river delta. If this trend continues, Bangladesh expects to transcend out of LDC status to low-medium developing country by 2021. It will be an achievement in the 50th year of independence. All will come to naught and probably reversed due to probable extremely adverse impacts of climate change on water resources. It will have consequent impact on agricultural and food security in a country which already accommodates 160 million people. Does the international community and the EU in particular, which has invested so much in the development process of the country, wish it to be so? Pointing out the adverse impacts of climate change across Bangladesh, the members of the delegation said, agriculture is already threatened by increased frequency and severity of flooding, increasingly high variability of rainfall, and severity of drought, particularly due to rising trends of temperature. These are in addition to the continuingly creeping ingress in salinity in soil and water along the coastal areas. The coastal areas are threatened with increasing severity of cyclonic storm surge, and much increased wave interactions due to increased sea surface temperature. This has been adversely affecting lives and livelihoods of coastal fishermen. All these raise the spectre of widespread hunger, if not famine, in the near to medium future. Food insecurity along with climate change and its impacts such as salinity of water, possible increased incidents of pathogens and vector-borne diseases will affect the health of people and more so possibly in urban areas due to high density of population. For that matter, urban areas are already projected to include half the people by 2030, which may be partly a result of climate-induced displacement from rural areas. CLIMATE FINANCE: Implication for financing development and the role of climate finance have to be understood against these perspectives. In some cases, it becomes difficult to design development projects without taking into consideration the impacts of climate change as well as that on the beneficiaries. In other cases, climate finance itself becomes development finance when adaptation has to be a completely new activity and would not have existed without the impacts of climate change. Bangladeshi scientists have already succeeded in developing shorter-duration variety as well as mildly salinity-tolerant variety. But we need more to prepare ourselves for the impending future as well as giving the farmers more choice and freedom. And, freedom of choice is indeed development. Bangladesh is already in the Sixth Five-Year Plan trying to integrate climate change impacts into development projects. The changed design sometime needs additional funding over and above the normal one. In some other cases, projects are undertaken which would not have arisen had there been no climate change. Whether one calls it additionally or not, development financing must take into account of these realities. Whether one calls it development financing or climate financing, there are needs for financing new types of activities. One of these is loss and damage. Climate change has been incipient process and had already caused loss and damage. But people had not sat idle. Farmers, for example, the world over including Bangladesh have adapted to it. Who is going to compensate for the additional costs they have already borne? Compensatory financing is necessary for such past loss and damage. This is a new type of climate financing, which has to be beyond development financing. How to deliver this remains an issue and which needs to be debated. RISK REDUCTION MECHANISMS: The other issue of future loss and damages which may be - only partly - recouped through risk reduction mechanisms. Only one of the mechanisms is the insurance process. But who would pay the premium? Would the landless and marginal farmers in Bangladesh, already hamstrung by limited financing capabilities, finance this? This is another new type of financing. We do not know whether one would tag it as 'development financing' or 'climate financing'. However, it has to be facilitated. In Brussels, two Bangladeshi negotiators and civil society member at an OXFAM-initiated programme, acknowledged the EU's past as well as current contributions in disaster risk reduction in Bangladesh. They asked the EU to continue to put efforts on disaster risk reduction and include capacity building efforts in relation to addressing climate change in Bangladesh. 'CLIMATE COLONIALISM': On expectation from Warsaw UN climate conference at an EU Parliament event, Dr. Asaduzzaman regretted that some countries are attempting to glorify private funding as the solution to the emerging climate finance gap. They warned that adaptation costs should be primarily met through finance from public sources. Net resource flow from developing countries to the developed world would be seen as 'climate colonialism', he said. On the top of calls to the EU to step up its climate action for 2020 (when offsets are included, EU emissions are nearly 27 per cent below 1990 levels in 2012), this writer observed that discussions on 'Loss and Damage' would be of paramount importance in Warsaw. He suggested that an International Mechanism for Loss and Damage should be decided at COP 19. In response to this call, the representative from the Polish COP Presidency indicated that Warsaw was attaching high priority to this agenda item. Many communities are already dealing with economic hardships due to increased water level inundating land and acidification of water killing fish stocks as well as loss of lives and mass migration. How will they be supported to deal with impacts that cannot be adapted to? Bangladesh, together with other vulnerable countries, calls for an international mechanism to address this. We warned them though that poor people should not be required to pay insurance premiums to protect themselves against climate impacts. The potential huge cost of past and future losses as a result of climate impacts in both developed and developing countries should sharpen the minds of the EU leaders next week. They should step up climate action immediately to help the EU stay within an allowable carbon budget and control runaway costs of climate losses, including those related to major and hidden impacts on food security. As a bonus, early action is also good for Europe's economy as it will both create jobs and cut health costs. The EU as well as other developed countries should be warned if they plan to come empty-handed to Warsaw. With the Polish COP Presidency having made climate finance one of the key priorities for Warsaw, it is only right that expectations are high. A CLEAR MANDATE: Not only the EU but all developed countries should go to the UN climate talks next month in Warsaw with a clear mandate to negotiate and commit to: * Provide climate finance for 2013-2015 at a higher level than the amount delivered over the Fast Start Period. This should also include pledges and regular contributions to multilateral climate funds, especially the UN Green Climate Fund, the Adaptation Fund and the Least Developing Country Fund. * Ensure more than 50 per cent of public finance is dedicated to developing countries' adaptation needs. * Phase out EU member-states' and other developed countries' subsidies for fossil fuels and deploy savings as a new source of international climate finance * Use the upcoming structural reform of the EU Emissions Trading System as an opportunity to raise climate finance by automatically allocating a percentage of revenues from the auctioning of emissions allowances to the Green Climate Fund. * Create a new funding mechanism for addressing climate-induced loss and damage so that Green Climate Fund is not over-stressed. Let us hope, interactions in Brussels would yield positive and concrete impacts in the outcome of the upcoming Warsaw climate conference next month. The writer is a lead climate negotiator of LDCs, an architect of Durban Platform and Durban Alliance, a member of UN Adaptation Committee, UN Water Future and Solutions, Chairman of APFEJ & FEJB. [email protected]