More than 50 organisations from countries due to receive the loans recently signed a statement opposing the concept of climate loans, which was initially invented by the UK. In Bangladesh we have already seen the impacts of climate change, with thousands of lives lost and thousands of people displaced. By pushing climate loans, the UK is making people in countries like mine pay twice for climate change, even though we played virtually no part in causing the problem.
First, we have to endure the impacts. Bangladesh will lose around one-third of its land and there will be 30 million more displaced people due to climate induced problems in next 50 years. Second, if rich industrialised countries get their way, we will have to repay these unfair climate loans.
Countries such as the UK are historically responsible for causing climate change. By 11 January each year, the average UK citizen will emit as much as the average Bangladeshi will in an entire year. Industrialised countries not only bear the historic responsibility for climate change, but also current responsibility. They should be providing compensation to the countries where people are dealing with the impacts of climate change caused by the actions of others.
Offering Bangladesh climate loans through the World Bank is a form of trickery that will push us deeper into poverty, with no means of escape. Loans for climate adaptation are supposed to help countries cope with the worst impacts of global warming. They are not intended to fund income-generating projects, so no new money will be created to repay them.
Yet again, the World Bank has at heart the interests of the small group of countries responsible for climate change, and not those of the world's poor. It has repeatedly failed to consult the people whose lives will be directly affected by its projects, leading to loss of land and livelihoods for millions. The new climate loans programme perpetuates these problems, as Climate Loan Sharks, the report by our allies at the Word Development Movement, makes clear. What's more, the World Bank has a long history of funding fossil fuel projects, having increased its funding 40-fold in the last five years. Read the full report here.
Source: Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, guardian.co.uk.
