Striving for self reliance
Bangladesh has been demanding compensation form the countries mainly responsible for climate change. Apart from compensation, Bangladesh also deserves technology and capacity building support from the industrialised countries
Md. Mujibul Haque Munir
Three recent decisions, taken by the world leaders, will hugely impact the struggle of development of the small countries like Bangladesh. These three decisions indicate that, Bangladesh has no other options than to be self reliant in terms of food security and climate change adaptation. Moreover, this strives for self-reliance must be started from the community level.
The 10th Ministerial Conference of World Trade Organization has decided to bring an end to agriculture subsidies. Developing countries will remove subsidies within 2023, Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and net food-importing countries will do that within 2030. It means countries like Bangladesh has to stop all its supports towards agriculture. It will lead Bangladesh to remove almost a full ministry called Ministry of Agriculture that is providing various extension supports to the agriculture sector.
More than 50 per cent of the total populations of Bangladesh depend on agriculture for livelihood; Agriculture plays a pivotal role in Bangladeshs economy and in fact, agriculture determines peoples lives and livelihood of this region. This sector accounts for about 20 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and 60 per cent of the national employment, it faces serious challenges posed by the decline of land availability. Rapid shrinkage of agricultural (1 per cent per year) and rapid urbanization (12 per cent in each year) are making the sector vulnerable.
But allocation for agriculture in the national budget is declining in a regular basis. Allocation for agriculture is only 4.30 per cent of the total budget. Last year budget for the agriculture ministry was 5.12 per cent. So, agriculture gets 0.82 per cent lower allocation compared to the previous year budget. Proportionately it is the lowest allocation in last five years. The 2015-16 budget allocates a subsidy of 90 billion taka for agriculture, which is the same of the last year. Since the budget expects a 6.2 per cent inflation it means allocation for subsidy is in fact 6.2 per cent less than the last year allocation. There was a demand to increase subsidy last year and even this year, but government is decreasing the subsidy for agriculture ignoring demands from respective quarters. Due to the outcome of the last WTO decision the situation will be worse. When farmers of Bangladesh consider the present subsidy as insufficient government will have to remove it totally.
Bangladesh is widely recognized as one of the most vulnerable countries due to climate change. Bangladesh is one of he most sufferer due to the climate change being one of the less responsible for it! in 2011 it was estimated that direct annual cost of Bangladesh for natural disasters over the previous 10 years was between 0.5 and 1 per cent of GDP. World Bank estimates that, Bangladesh needs about U$S 5.7 billions as adaptation cost to face the increased risks of cyclones and inland monsoon floods in a changing climate by 2050. This amount should come from the countries which are historically responsible for the emerged situation. Apart from compensation, Bangladesh also deserves technology and capacity building support from the industrialized countries. Bangladesh has been demanding compensation form the countries mainly responsible for climate change. The last Conference of Parities (CoP 21) has shut that opportunity too. The draft climate agreement has removed the option of compensation; rather it has banned to claim it!
Another very important development agenda is the SDGs. At the seventieth session of the UN General Assembly on 25 September 2015, 193 member states have adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). According to United Nations Resolution A/RES/70/1, all the member states have committed to work towards implementing the 2030 Agenda within their own countries and at the regional and global levels. 17 Goals with 169 associated Targets will come into effect on 1 January 2016 and will guide the international development agenda over the next 15 years. It is said that, SDGs will dominate the future course of actions regarding development till 2030. But challenge of SDGs is the appropriate finance needed for its implementation. It is so far estimated that to achieve SDGs for all countries additional global investments of $5 trillion to $7 trillion per year up to 2030 will be required. From the experiences of MDG period, it is clear once again that, there will be commitment form rich countries to support the least developed countries in achieving SDGs, but reality will be far clearly from the hope.
In many fields of MDGs Bangladesh has made tremendous achievements. Still 19 per cent of total MDG targets have been identified as totally fulfilled and it is on track of achieving 6 per cent of the targets. 38 targets were identified as need attention, means these are not fully completed. To achieve the MDGs within the timeline, the annual requirements of aid for Bangladesh were estimated at US$ 3.5 billion per year. In actual terms, Bangladesh received US$ 1.58 billion on average annually from the donors. Bangladesh is not getting the support promised by the international community.
The developed countries commitment of providing 0.7 percentage of their GDP as aid was made in the seventies, but only Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg and the Netherlands can claim to have met the target so far. The contributions from other rich countries are way below. So it is clear that, to achieve the SDGs Bangladesh will have to mobilize internal resources.
During the recent couple of years European countries have been suffering from different types of economic crises. This has resulted cuts in foreign aids of many countries. A paradigm shift in aid policies is also very much visible. Donors are now pretty much interested in emergency humanitarian support rather than development projects specially for advocacy or awareness building or service delivery.
Till day Civil Society Organizations and NGOs of Bangladesh is getting development aids or funds as still this country is the category of Least Developed Countries. The government is gong to declare Bangladesh as a country with Middle Income. It is rationally assumed that as soon as the government declares Bangladesh as a country with middle income, foreign donation will be reduced drastically.
So considering the major international scenarios it is obvious that countries like Bangladesh will not get supports in future like it used to get previously.
Bangladesh has to be less depended to others, rather self reliance efforts is must.
The writer is a development activist
