21 April 2021 | The NewAge
-------------------------------------
Bangladesh should stop subsidising fossil fuel based power plants in order to fulfil commitments it has made in various international climate forums, said Saber Hossain Chowdhury, chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on environment, forest and climate change.
He said that while working for making industrialised countries responsible for environmental degradation, Bangladesh should also ensure that steps had been taken by it so that the environment would not harm.
‘Power sector subsidy has to go,’ said Saber as he addressed an online conference in the afternoon organised ahead of the two-day-long virtual climate summit to begin from April 22 hosted by the US president Joe Biden.
Bangladesh Working Group on External Debt organised the discussion. Green activists from India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bhutan participated in the conference titled Poeple2biden.
They said that the point of climate discussions at this moment should be about sharing technologies that developed countries were improving with minimal environmental damage.
Besides claiming reparations from industrialised countries like the USA who are responsible for climate change, the most vulnerable but developing countries also need to make sure that they have the access to clean technologies developed by developing countries, they said.
‘We demand that Biden should take historical responsibility of climate change,’ said Hemantha Withanage, executive director of the Centre for Environmental Justice, Sri Lanka.
About 1.8 billion people suffer from climate crisis and the people included countries such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, one of the least carbon emitters in the world, he said.
A total of 40 countries have been invited to the summit with participation from Bangladesh, India and Bhutan from South Asia.
Speakers reminded that the US is the world’s one of the biggest fossil fuel financiers and also one of the largest patronisers of fossil fuel industry in terms of manufacturing equipment needed to run the industry.