UN clears $10m for communities of Bangladesh small islands, shoals

The United Nations has approved $10 million for Bangladesh to strengthen resilience of vulnerable communities of small islands and riverine shoals.

Despite being one of the countries that are most vulnerable to climate change effects, Bangladesh is receiving the first allocation from the Adaptation Fund.

The fund will be spent through a project being jointly implemented by the environment, forest and climate change ministry and United Nations Development Programme or UNDP, the UN body said in a media release on Thursday.

Established under the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the fund has since 2010 committed $532 million to climate adaptation and resilience activities, including supporting 80 concrete adaptation projects, according to the release.

The allocation for Bangladesh was made at a board meeting of the Adaptation Fund held at Bonn in Germany last month.

A total of $32.5 million were approved for new projects in Armenia, Dominican Republic, Bangladesh and Western Balkan to serve the Paris Climate Agreement smoothly.

"Despite a very full agenda, it was great to see the progress in new projects funded to benefit vulnerable communities across a variety of adaptation sectors including adaptation in small islands in Bangladesh," the release quoted the Fund’s Manager Mikko Ollikainen as saying.

“We will continue to extend our full support to the Government of Bangladesh in this regard and keep putting emphasis on climate resilient and green development,” Sudipto Mukerjee, UNDP Resident Representative in Bangladesh, added.

The project will contribute towards achieving national priorities set in the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP) and Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).