Climate damage, prevention cost Bangladesh $2b yearly: Report

A recently published report by the Stockholm Environment Institute shows that rural households in Bangladesh spend almost $2 billion yearly on climate damage repair and prevention measures— a much higher amount than what the government or international agencies finance.

The report titled “Operationalizing finance for loss and damage: from principles to modalities” highlighted that in countries like Bangladesh, vulnerable communities bear the greatest costs of climate impacts, read a press release on Tuesday.

“Households in rural Bangladesh spend almost $2 billion yearly on repairing climate-related damage and prevention measures – twice as much as the national government spends and over 12 times higher than multilateral international financing to Bangladesh’s rural population,” the report mentions.

The report shows that despite increasing demand for financial support, finance for addressing loss and damage has been largely absent and falls far short of the scale of needs.

“The challenge with loss and damage finance is not only to determine how much is needed but also how that money should be delivered. Inappropriate funding mechanisms might hurt the victims of climate change even more. Our report is one of the first to explore the issue,” the paper's lead author and Stockholm Environment Institute Research Associate Ines Bakhtaoui said.

The report makes key recommendations for negotiating loss and damage finance at COP27 to be prioritised, including simplified and directly accessible funds for communities and marginalised groups.

International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) Director Dr Saleemul Huq, who is also one of the paper's authors, said, “The issue of how to operationalise modalities for mobilising and disbursing finance for loss and damage is extremely relevant right now. This report starts the ball rolling.”

“Any decision on loss and damage finance at COP27 must centre the needs and priorities of vulnerable communities most affected by loss and damage," the paper’s lead author and Stockholm Environment Institute Associate Scientist Zoha Shawoo mentioned.

In recommendation, the report states that a loss and damage finance facility is time-consuming for implementation, however, it has the advantage of offering a blank slate for modalities tailored to principles grounded in climate justice.

Highlighting that the COP27 decision could include a phased approach of establishing a facility in the medium term and mobilising finance through existing mechanisms in the immediate term.