Reap benefit from climate investment funds: ADB

Dhaka, Bangladesh, June 17 (BSS)- Bangladesh should be prepared to
bargain its due stake over an emerging climate investment fund
(CIF), well ahead the pool financing starts offing in months for
developing countries vulnerable to climate change, said a senior
ADB official here.

Country Director of Asian Development Bank (ADB) Hua Du said
the government along with its development partners needs to
workout a plan and strategies to ask and convince the fund
mangers for providing adequate support both for mitigation and
adaptation purposes.

"Bangladesh is severely affected by climate change due to its
high reliance on nature, over population and geographic
location," Hua Du told BSS in an interview recently, after
attending last month's climate change workshop in Italy.

"The workshop was organised exclusively for
discussing Bangladesh issues," said the ADB chief, who leaves
Dhaka this month after six years of service in the local
resident mission of the Philippines-based lending agency.

The CIF, divided in two categories, is expected to pool
together five to six billion dollars initially from different
donors, especially from G8 countries, to help developing nations
to pursue cleaner development paths and protect themselves from
the impacts of climate change between now and 2012.

The funds are likely to be launched in the next few months
after the board of the World Bank, the key custodian of the
funds, approves them.

The ADB, African Development Bank, European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development, and the Inter-American
Development Bank are the co-managers of the fund.

These banks will help their client countries to access the
money, which is considered just half the size of the required 10
billion US dollar annually for developing world to absorb
climate change shocks.

"The CIF will be new and additional to the existing aid
commitments for developing countries to address urgent climate
change related challenges," said Hua Du.

She said Bangladesh should focus more onto adaptation fund
from external sources to ease pressure on its limited domestic
resources, along with the mitigation programmes.

She, however, suggested for using local technologies to make
programmes cost effective and encourage indigenous knowledge to
fight the human-induced natural disasters.