Bangladesh aware of need to shift from brown to green growth: Foreign Minister

Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali has said that Bangladesh is aware of the need to shift from “brown to green growth”.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 26 April 2017, 09:36 AM
Updated : 26 April 2017, 12:19 PM

But he insisted it cannot be done overnight considering ground realities.

He said Bangladesh economy is now at “crossroads” which needs further growth acceleration to achieve the middle-income country status by 2O21.

But at the same time, the need for sustainable growth is felt “more than ever before”.

“Therefore, we must carve out an innovative solution in order to make a breakthrough in several areas of policy making and institutional processes to achieve social and environmental targets under the SDGs by 2O3O,” he said while inaugurating a conference on ‘green growth solutions’ in Dhaka.

He, however, said there are “growing evidence" that attaining cost effective and sustained economic growth is possible through resource efficiency in life cycle of production and services combined with appropriate green technology and eco-innovation.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Denmark Embassy in Dhaka jointly hosted the conference with the Nordic Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

This is to learn from the Danish experience as Copenhagen is globally acclaimed for its expertise on green issues.

Denmark is also on track to be the first country in the world to completely replace fossil fuel by renewable energy by 2O5O.

The foreign minister said the conference was a follow up of his last year’s visit to Copenhagen which was the first ever visit by a Bangladesh foreign minister to Denmark since 1972 when the relations were established.

Both sides, during his visit, agreed to revilatise the bilateral cooperation through development of a “broad-based strategic partnership for 2030 agenda for sustainable development”.

Citing examples, he said Bangladesh has already put “greater emphasis” on energy efficiency, energy conservation and utilization of renewable energy in industry and housing sector.

“More than 4 million solar home systems have been installed across the country serving 16 million people. On the industrial front, the country promotes cleaner production with the principle of resource efficiency and resource recycling”.

But he acknowledged that they will have to go “a long way before we reach a satisfactory level of green growth”.

He hoped that this conference, where officials and experts from both sides gathered , would generate ideas to devise strategies on how Bangladesh can better tap into the opportunities and move towards a sustainable development pathway.

Such awareness will be “important in developing home-grown, country-specific policy and programmes to promote inclusive and green growth in Bangladesh,” he said.

Denmark ambassador in Dhaka Mikael Hemniti Winther on the sidelines of the conference told bdnews24.com that he sees “a lot of potential in working together in green solutions for Bangladesh”.

“We have been facing energy crisis since the 1970s. We did not have the energy to feed our economic growth. We were forced to develop technologies to overcome the crisis,” he said.

“We have lot of technology being developed that can make more efficient use of energy. We can share many of these our experiences as Bangladesh is in similar situation with depleting energy resources and big environment challenges”.

He said there are many solutions now if a country wants to combine efficient use of energy, water management, and waste management.

“It may cost a little bit in investment but very quickly it will recover the investment and impact on economy and environment”.

He said Denmark had already shown that it is possible in Bangladesh through a project in a textile industry.