Development partners should strongly and decisively support the climate change related actions and ambitions of the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs), said experts at a workshop in the capital today.

In this context, they said that the developed countries should deliver on the US$100 billion finance per annum that they had promised to provide to the countries hit by climate change, said a press release.

Such observations came during a workshop on United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) LDC Report 2022: Implications for Bangladesh’ organized by Support to Sustainable Graduation Project (SSGP) of Economic Relations Division (ERD) in the capital.

State Minister for Planning Dr Shamsul Alam was the chief guest of the workshop.

UN Resident Coordinator in Bangladesh Gwyn Lewis attended the workshop as the guest of honour while ERD Secretary Sharifa Khan was in the chair.

It is notable that UNCTAD annually publishes a report on issues pertaining to the world’s LDCs. This annual report provides a comprehensive and authoritative source of socio-economic analysis and data on the LDCs.

This year’s UNCTAD LDC report, which was published on 03 November 2022, had been themed on ‘The low-carbon transition and its daunting implications for structural transformation’.

The report noted that although least developed countries (LDCs) had barely contributed to climate change, they are on the front lines of the climate crisis.

The report also observed that although LDCs had set ambitious emission-reduction targets for themselves, international support for adaptation and sustainable development of LDCs had so far fallen remarkably short of what is needed, both in terms of climate finance and access to environmentally-sound technologies.

In this context, the workshop was organized to discuss and analyse the significance of the theme and findings of this year’s UNCTAD report in the context of Bangladesh.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Shamsul Alam said that Bangladesh continues to seek a 50-50 distribution between adaptation and mitigation from international climate financing.

He also asked the partners from international public and private sector to join in Bangladesh’s climate change related efforts in the spirit of the Paris Agreement.

Sharifa Khan, in her keynote presentation, identified inadequate and complex financing mechanism as one of the major challenges towards Bangladesh’s green transition.

‘Bangladesh spends over $1 billion while receiving only $ 417 million from the Green Climate Fund,’ she informed.