Civil society organisations (CSOs) Thursday urged the government to ensure that loss and damage finance is on the formal agenda of the 2022 UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt.
As one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, Bangladesh also should strongly support the legally binding commitment to a “zero emission” target followed by a “maximum 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature” goal.
The civil society leaders made the demand at the seminar “COP-27: Government Position and Civil Societies Opinion” in Dhaka Thursday.
The seminar was jointly organised by COAST foundation, An Organization for Socio-Economic Development (AOSED), Centre for Participatory Research and Development (CPRD) Coastal Development Partnership (CDP), Centre for Sustainable Rural Livelihood (CSRL), Equity and Justice Working Group, and Bangladesh (EquityBD).
Loss and damage mainly refers to the impacts of climate change that cannot be (or have not been) avoided through mitigation or adaptation. In addition to economic losses and damages to households, communities, infrastructure, and industries like agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and tourism, it also encompasses noneconomic losses to lives, cultures, and territories.
Syed Aminul Hoque of EquityBD said COP27 is crucial as the developed countries are trying to breach all of their previous commitments and tend to bypass the basic principles of the Paris Agreement.
“They have put forward new concepts like net zero emission, New Collective and Quantified Goal on Finance. These vague or elusive concepts proposed by the developed countries are deeply inequitable and do not commensurate with meaningful reductions of global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius under the Paris Agreement,” he added.
Sharif Jamil, general secretary of Bangladesh Paribesh Andolon (Bapa), suggested the government take a clear stance against net zero compliance in COP27 as Bangladesh has no commitment to this concept except zero emission by 2050.
Ziaul Hoque Mukta of CSRL demanded a separate regime for climate-induced displacement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in COP negotiation, he said.
Source: United News of Bangladesh