climate fund management
Call for ensuring transparency
National and international experts have urged governments of climate-vulnerable countries to ensure the highest level of integrity, transparency and accountability in the overall management of their respective adaptation funds.
Following the Paris Agreement, Bangladesh and other climate-affected countries must work together for building individual and collective capacity to ensure the highest level of integrity, transparency and accountability to offset a range of governance deficits which can adversely affect the adaptation efforts of vulnerable countries, they said during a day-long deliberation on adaptation financing yesterday.
Organised by Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), the Integrity Dialogue on Climate Change Adaptation Finance Transparency: Accountability and Participation was held at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre (BICC), where delegates from Australia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, the Maldives, Nepal, the Netherlands, Sri Lanka and the USA, along with reputed national experts, deliberated on multi-dimensional aspects of climate finance issues, more particularly climate change adaptation finance.
Touching on challenges of defining the word adaptation, there was a consensus among the panellists that adaptation to climate change risk is already putting additional strain on development efforts in countries like Bangladesh.
The speakers also voiced concern about the absence of concrete and time-bound commitment from the developed countries, meagre flow of grant-based public funds, mal-adaptation or non-consideration of the local climate risks in adaptation projects and programmes and non-disclosure of project-related information.
Other areas of concern included the inadequate participation of local communities in adaptation planning and monitoring of the implementation projects, absence of meaningful grievance redress system and complicated finance and accounting system.
The speakers unanimously agreed that climate change funds are not free from governance weaknesses. As many cases of irregularities in the planning and implementation phases of climate projects have already come to light, it is now high time for precautionary action worldwide, they said. The speakers also highlighted that there should be transparency and accountability on the part of developed countries. They urged the developed countries to fully implement their commitment abiding by the polluters pay principle where the affected developing countries would get climate finance as grant and not as loan.
They suggested using digital technology for disclosure of climate finance-related information to ensure transparency and accountability of all stakeholders.
The chief guest of the concluding session, Masud Ahmed, who is also the Comptroller and Auditor General of Bangladesh, acknowledged that while it will take a while to reach international standards, his office has so far successfully audited more than hundred climate projects.
