Officials of non-governmental organisations hold a national dialogue on transparency in climate financing at Dhaka Reporters Unity on Thursday. — New Age photo

Green activists and academics on Thursday stressed need-based distribution of climate change projects for proper utilisation of fund and fulfil the need of climate change-affected areas.
At a discussion at Dhaka Reports Unity, they said a guideline was vital to prepare, assess and implement a project.
Bangladesh Unnayan Parishad organised the programme in association with Oxfam and European Union on ‘BCCSAP implementation and utilisation of climate finance ensure transparency’.
Centre for Global Change executive director Ahsan Uddin Ahmed presented the keynote paper in which he said under the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund the government prioritised infrastructure-related projects which was 44.3 per cent of the total allocation for 32 projects.
The government allocated 16.8 per cent of total allocation for 17 food security, social protection and health projects and of them six are essentially infrastructure-related projects, he said.
He said there was no check and balance in geographical distribution of projects and said the government approved many projects for the south eastern part of the country whereas south western part was the most affected because of the adverse impact of climate change.
He said most of the climate change projects lacked mass people’s participation while in international negotiation the expert representatives bargain for participation of the leaders of the least developed countries.
Palli Karma Shayak Foundation chairman Qazi Kholiquzzaman said long-term planning was important to ensure transparency in climate change project implementation.
He said for climate change projects droughts, cyclone and flood-affected areas were their main priority but they sometimes lacked related projects.
Climate change expert Ansarul Karim stressed the need for a guideline to prepare, assess and implement a project.
Bangladesh Unnayan Parishad chairman MA Jalil, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies director Asaduzzaman, former WASA managing director Azharul Islam also spoke at the programme.