Dedicated fund for the conservation and ecological restoration of the mangrove Sundarbans like the Amazon Fund was stressed at a seminar held on Monday.
The Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies organised the national seminar titled 鈥楤angladesh鈥檚 Climate Resilience and Financing: Challenges, Opportunities and Way Forward鈥� at its auditorium in the capital.
Speakers assumed that funding would not be a major issue if the government took the initiative, which could help better and innovative conservation of the forest.
Retired Air Commodore Ishfaq Ilahi Choudhury said the establishment of a Sundarbans Fund for the Bangladesh and Indian parts of the mangrove forests might bring positive outcomes like what had been done in the case of Amazon Fund.
If the initiative is taken, fund will not be a major issue, said the IUCN Bangladesh representative and Bangladesh Institute of Planners鈥� general secretary Shaikh Muhammad Mehedi Ahsan.
Bangladesh is neither prepared for changing weather nor skilled enough to attract and utilise global climate funds, said climate negotiator and water expert Professor Ainun Nishat.
Bangladesh鈥檚 climate action needs trans-disciplinary coordination when climate actions lack inter-ministerial coordination, he added.
Addressing as chief guest, member of the parliament and Climate Parliament Bangladesh convenor Nahim Razzaque urged climate activists to explore public-private partnerships and innovative financing methods amid minimal availability of grants for climate adaptation and mitigation.
Finance Division鈥檚 additional secretary Mohammad Abu Yusuf, the BIISS鈥檚 senior research fellow Sufia Khanom, and the IUCN鈥檚 Mehedi Ahsan presented three separate keynotes at the seminar.
Abu Yusuf said that blended finance, attracting private capital, could be an effective way of scaling up climate finance.
Sufia Khanom mentioned 113 necessary interventions in Bangladesh鈥檚 climate resilience and estimated that the country would require $230 billion for the next 27 years.
The ActionAid Bangladesh鈥檚 country director Farah Kabir, urging participation from private entities, warned that nobody, including the private sector, was out of the climate change impacts.
Chaired by the BIISS chairman and ambassador AFM Gousal Azam Sarker, the BIISS director general Major General Md Abu Bakar Siddique Khan, Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation鈥檚 deputy managing director Fazle Rabbi Sadeque Ahmed, among others, spoke at the seminar.
The Sundarbans, one of the largest mangrove forests in the world, lies on the border of Bangladesh and India on the bank of the Bay of Bengal.
Inscribed in 1987 by the World Heritage site, the forest is known for its wide range of fauna, including 260 bird species, the Bengal tiger and other threatened species such as the estuarine crocodile and the Indian python.