Preety Bhandari, a Director of ADB's Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department, focuses on how ADB is working to tackle climate change as well as the importance of a comprehensive climate deal in Paris for the poor in Asia and the Pacific.

Transcript

Title: Preety Bhandari on Why a Climate Deal is Critical for Asia

Description: Preety Bhandari, a Director of ADB’s Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department, focuses on how ADB is working to tackle climate change as well as the importance of a comprehensive climate deal in Paris for the poor in Asia and the Pacific.

Preety Bhandari
Director, Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department
Asian Development Bank

Q: Why is climate change such a critical issue for developing Asia?
A: Climate change as you know is beginning to threaten all developmental progress that Asia has made in the past years and to that extent, the battle for climate change and the contributions of Asia and the Pacific to mitigating climate change become very very significant. Currently, Asia is contributing about 35% of total greenhouse gas emissions globally and this share is expected to rise to as much as 46% in 2035 if no efforts are made to bend the emissions curve. From that perspective, it’s important what Asia is contributing to climate change. Having said that, Asia is also home to 2/3 of the poorest world population and the one ability of these populations to the impacts of climate change is also a question to be addressed and climate change would exacerbate the poverty reduction efforts that we are trying to make. So both from reducing climate change emissions, Asia is probably the hotspot for it and also for addressing the impacts of climate change and how do poor populations in Asia and the Pacific would be affected, how we can alleviate that, is a very important issue.

Q: What is ADB doing to help Asia and the Pacific mitigate and adapt to the impact of climate change?
A: ADB has a multi-prong strategy to address both – making countries more towards low carbon development or building climate resilience in our developing member countries. Be it interventions in the energy sector, we already have a target for many years of $2 billion investment in clean energy in Asia and the Pacific, which we have been surpassing and introducing clean energy of course, also brings with it the benefit of for reducing emissions. Then, looking at the transportation sector, what are the different modes of transportation, what are the cleaner modes of transportation is another issue that we’re looking at in our investments in our developing member countries. Then, the options on urban infrastructure, better urban development again contributes to addressing climate challenge on the vulnerability side and the adaptation side there are significant opportunities. In the agriculture sector, in climate proofing our own investments – the investments that ADB makes, to what extent are we ensuring that the designs take care of future climatic scenarios and our investments are climate proofed is another consideration that we have while making investments. Apart from that again, urban infrastructure and to what extent is it climate proofed and how can we have more urban resilient development are various ways that ADB is integrating climate considerations in its portfolio of projects and investments.

Q: How is ADB mainstreaming climate financing?
A: ADB has actually made a very significant announcement recently in September on enhancing its climate financing. We are targeting now, a doubling of our climate financing from the current $3 billion to $6 billion by 2020. It is a significant step because we were the first multilateral development bank to come out and make this kind of a commitment and we set the bar for the other multilateral development banks to follow suit and they did so. ADB has really been bold and gone out and made this commitment of doubling its climate investment and this would be about 30% of our total resources in 2020 which is a very significant announcement. Apart from our own resources, what ADB has been doing in the past also is enabling access to multilateral climate funds for our developing countries, be the global environment facility, be the climate investment funds. In fact, climate investment funds have been the largest source of external climate financing for ADB.  We have a portfolio of about $1.5 billion from the climate investment funds, they have really helped spur ADB’s integration of climate considerations in its investment projects. But apart from climate investment funds, the new multilateral fund at scale fund is the green climate fund which has commitments of about $10 billion and again, ADB was the first multilateral development bank to be accredited as an implementing entity of the green climate fund which means that now we are accredited to channelize green climate funding to our developing member countries. Another first for us has been that ADB was able to access this funding recently in the first batch of eight projects that were approved by the green climate fund board just recently, earlier this month.  This is a project in Fiji, this is an adaptation project in a very vulnerable Pacific country which are looking at water sector adaptation and how water supplies in the future can take into account the future climate impacts and ensure adequate water supply to the greater Suva region in Fiji. For this we’ve got a $31 million grant from the Green Climate Fund, and we will blend this grant from the Green Climate Fund with the loans that ADB is providing to the government of Fiji to enable a climate resilient water supply infrastructure in Fiji.

Q: What’s needed to win the battle against climate change over and above financing?
A: What we need is also technological innovation – more appropriate technology is in our investments and significant partnerships. I mean, if you look at our investments and ADB as a player, we can go the extra mile if we have the right kind of partnerships. I’m not talking about only NGOs, I’m talking about institutions which have their way with all the research possibilities – all the technologies. I’m talking about the private sector, I’m also talking about institutional investors who are looking for opportunities to invest. So, technology and partnerships for sure and as far as technology goes when we made our recent climate finance commitment to double climate financing we have also committed that we will examine our procurement processes to see to what extent can we enable procurement of climate friendly technology. So that is a significant commitment also from the perspective of Asian Development Bank.

Q: How important are knowledge partnerships and knowledge sharing as countries come together to tackle climate change?
A: I would say it is very critical and again on that front I can give you some examples on partnerships, very good knowledge partnerships that we have entered into. There is a partnership amongst the bilaterals, the governments, multilateral development banks, and the private sector to allow for provision of climate services for resilient development. ADB has joined that partnership which will allow developing countries in our region to access climate data, future climate data that could enable better planning and better policy making for them. We’re working very closely with the UK MET office as well as the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia to be able to provide such climate data to countries and the regions. So building such institutions I think, is also critical and working very closely with partners to develop this kind of a knowledge base which allows for more conscious and more prudent policy making and prudent investments is also part of our strategy for enhancing climate investments.

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