I thank you, Ambassador Woodward.
Excellencies, Distinguished Colleagues,
I am very pleased to join today’s event and greatly welcome the launching of the Coalition in New York. I thank and congratulate you, Co-Chairs, for your efforts and leadership, of this important group.
I thank you for sharing with us important updates. I also thank Ambassador Zellenrath for his briefing on the Climate Adaptation Summit.
This Group of Friend, established right after the Climate Adaptation Summit in 2019, represents our shared commitments on adaptation and resilience building. Bangladesh is also happy to be a founding member of the Adaptation Action Coalition, led by the Co-Chairs of this group, along with Malawi, the Netherlands and St. Lucia.
We would like to leverage the strength of this Coalition to engage with all global, regional, and national stakeholders to mobilize political will and collective actions to address the existing gaps in the global endeavors for adaptation and resilience building. To that end, we wish to harness the catalytic impacts of our mutual commitments in the lead up to the COP-26 in Glasgow, especially now, to build back better and greener from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Allow me to highlight a few specific points in this regard:
First, adaptation and mitigation must go hand in hand. Adaptation cannot be a panacea on its own without effective mitigation. If we fail to limit global temperature rise below 1.5 degree centigrade, there is a heavy price to pay. As the current President of the 48-member Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), we call upon all our partners to pay equal attention to both mitigation and adaptation.
Second, Bangladesh is leading on locally led adaptation measures. We are now hosting the South Asian Office of the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA). With our experience and commitment, we wish to make the Centre in Dhaka an important hub in the network of other GCA offices. We are ready to share with others our good practices in transformative adaptation and resilience building measures including the 82-year Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100, locally led innovations in disaster management and disaster risk reduction programmes, innovations in drought and salinity resistant crops etc.
Third, as one the most climate vulnerable countries in the world, we recognize the importance of the nexus between climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. The COVID-19 pandemic has put a sharp spotlight on this issue. Amid the pandemic, many climate vulnerable countries have been facing devastating cyclones, floods, and other natural disasters. It is, therefore, imperative to enhance adaptation capacities of the climate vulnerable countries, especially to tackle double jeopardy of such pandemics and disasters.
Fourth, we are still far from fulfilling our promises of mobilizing 100 billion dollars by 2020 for climate financing. At the Climate Adaptation Summit hosted by the Netherlands in January, my Prime Minister highlighted that global adaptation actions are far from keeping pace with the scale of devastation due to climate change. She made an urgent call for enhanced climate finance to help vulnerable countries to adapt to the damage already done.
Fifth, we reiterate the critical need for technology and knowledge transfer for carrying forward our adaptation efforts.
Finally, we would like to engage in constructive and productive dialogue in narrowing down gaps on the loss and damage issue. We stand ready to contribute to any efforts that would lead to a tangible progress in this area.
In conclusion, I would like to echo the call of the Co-Chairs to join the Coalition.
I thank you all.