Bangladesh wants a south Asian fund for climate change

Reuters: Bangladesh has proposed the creation a fund to fight climate change in densely populated South Asia, which experts say is vulnerable to rising seas, melting glaciers and greater extremes of droughts and floods. Regional experts on climate change began two days of talks in Dhaka on Tuesday, ahead of a meeting of environment ministers from countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

"We want to find a common stand among the South Asian countries and will raise our voice together against the perils of climate changes," said Raja Devasish Roy, head of the Environment and Forest Ministry of Bangladesh, after opening the experts' meeting. SAARC, comprising Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, will adopt a common strategy at the Dhaka meeting, officials said.

Devasish said industrialised countries were the most to blame for global warming and should compensate poorer nations by providing them grants -- not loans -- to fight the effects of climate change. "Bangladesh has already created a fund for climate change and allocated $44 million for this purpose in the current fiscal year's (July-June) budget," Devasish said. "We call upon all development partners and relevant agencies to come forward to contribute to this fund," he said….

Bangladesh's Parliament, in Dhaka. Photo by Micah Parker, Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License