High-Level Leaders’ Dialogue on Climate Change Implementation of the Paris Agreement
Towards COP24 and Beyond
Statement
by
H. E. Sheikh Hasina
Hon’ble Prime Minister
Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh
UNHQ, New York.
26 September 2018
Secretary General Mr. Antonio Guterres,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen
I would like to thank the Secretary General for convening this High-Level Leaders’ Dialogue on climate change ahead of COP 24 in Poland in December this year.
Excellencies,
I was born in a riverine delta in Bangladesh. I grew up watching the ups and downs of life in the riverside. I saw our people’s resilience, adaptation and innovation in battling climate change. I saw the way people made Bangladesh self-reliant in food production, in spite of the natural disasters. In my childhood, my father, our Father of Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, used to ask us to take care of our soil and water. He dreamt of realizing Golden Bangladesh as well as a shared future for all by protecting and nurturing our environment along with the economy.
Distinguished participants,
Bangladesh is one of the most climate vulnerable countries. Climate change threatens our life and livelihood of our 160 million people.
In Bangladesh, we have mainstreamed climate actions and disaster risks reduction in our national plan. We have investment of over 1 percent of our GDP to address the climate change impacts. Moreover, US$ 450 million has been allocated from our own resources for adaptation and mitigation purposes. We have also transformed our agriculture making it more resilient to the impacts of climate change.
Excellencies,
Five years back, in New York, I announced that, as a responsible member of the international community, Bangladesh will never exceed the average per capita emission of the developing world. Our commitment to low-carbon, climate-resilient development is firm. We plan to move to ‘Carbon budgeting’, resilient industrialization. We wish to ‘de-carbonize’ our ‘manufacturing pathways’.
Bangladesh has installed around six million Solar Home Systems, provided two million Improved Cook Stoves among the poorest. We are developing stress-tolerant crop varieties to cope. In spite of our limitations, we allocated 385 million US dollars to our own Funds for adaptation and mitigation.
Distinguished Participants
We need support for climate change adaptation and wider ‘capacity building’ and, also for ‘technology’ development and transfer in areas like agriculture, public health, disaster management. I hope that member states will utilize the opportunity in COP 24 to have a more focused discussion on climate finance to put the world on track to meet pre-2020 ambition and long term goals of Paris Agreement.
I thank you.