Prime Minister, Bring Home a Receipt, Not Just Applause

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman is attending the COP31 summit in Antalya. It raises some optimism. However, it is also true that people have heard many speeches delivered in the previous COP summits in the past decade raising hopes; but they ultimately bore no fruit. In one version or another, it was repeated that Bangladesh contributes almost nothing to global emissions, yet pays a heavy price. And big emitters must keep their promises. However, these speeches have only frustrated common people in the end.
Meanwhile, the World Bank's Country Climate and Development Report has warned that Bangladesh could lose up to a third of its agricultural GDP by 2050, that about 13.3 million people may become internal climate migrants, and that cyclones already cost around US$1 billion a year. Heat alone cost an estimated 250 million workdays in 2024, worth US$1.3 to 1.8 billion. Our own plans are priced. Implementing Bangladesh's third Nationally Determined Contribution will need US$116.8 billion, of which US$90.23 billion is conditional on international support. Globally, UNEP estimates that developing countries will need US$310 to 365 billion a year for adaptation by 2035, while international public adaptation finance in 2023 was only US$26 billion.
Now look at what has actually arrived. Over roughly a decade, the Green Climate Fund has approved 10 projects for Bangladesh worth US$464 million. Rural households, by contrast, spend almost US$2 billion of their own money every year coping with climate shocks. And of the international climate finance we do receive, more than 70 per cent comes as loans. Our debt-to-grant ratio is 2.7, nearly four times the average for least developed countries. The world's sympathy is real. Its money is scarce, slow and, too often, borrowed. Loans matter more than they appear to. An embankment built with borrowed money must be repaid whether or not it holds in the next surge. Change Initiative puts Bangladesh's climate debt at US$79.6 for every citizen. In effect, a child born in Bhola today already owes money for a crisis that her country did almost nothing to cause. Each new adaptation loan adds to that bill.
Bangladesh is not asking empty-handed. The FY2026-27 budget sets aside Tk51,746 crore for climate-relevant spending across 25 ministries and divisions, a rise of more than 25 per cent, with three-quarters going to adaptation. Few countries this vulnerable spend so much of their own money. That record gives the prime minister the moral standing to ask more of others.
We should be honest about the limits. No COP will hand Bangladesh billions in a fortnight. At COP30 in Belém, countries spoke of tripling adaptation finance by 2035, but without a baseline or a binding timetable. The loss and damage fund opened its first call with only US$250 million, against requests of US$2 to 3 billion. Overpromising would only deepen public disappointment.
Within those limits, three outcomes are realistic and worth fighting for. First, Bangladesh should join other vulnerable countries in pressing for a clear baseline and year-by-year milestones for the Belém tripling, with a fixed grant share for least developed countries. Second, the Prime Minister should announce that Bangladesh will submit fully prepared proposals to the loss and damage fund within six months and press contributors to replenish it. A country that arrives with ready projects is harder to ignore. Third, every bilateral meeting in Antalya should seek one concrete thing: a grant window for locally led adaptation, reaching unions, farmers' groups and women's organisations directly. Small-scale farmers worldwide receive just 0.8 per cent of tracked climate finance; even a modest dedicated window would change that for Bangladesh.
The deeper frustration, however, is not about how much money the world sends. It is about whether Bangladeshis believe the money reaches them. That trust cannot be negotiated in Antalya. It can only be earned at home, and here the prime minister has full control.
People see the pattern clearly. Every November brings consultations in hotel ballrooms, delegations abroad and announcements of new funds. Every monsoon brings the same floods to the same villages. Without visible results on the ground, each new announcement adds to the scepticism instead of reducing it.
Trust has been badly damaged. In November 2025, Transparency International Bangladesh estimated that more than half of the US$458.5 million allocated under the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund between 2010 and 2024 was lost to corruption and irregularities. A government that wants the world to give more must first show its own people where the money goes.
Alongside his Antalya speech, the prime minister can make five pledges that need no one else's consent. Within 100 days, publish a single public record of every climate fund received, loan or grant, with its terms and the upazilas where it is spent, so that any citizen, journalist or MP can follow a taka from a donor's account to a village. Act on the TIB findings, with independent audits and prosecutions where wrongdoing is proven. Commit a fixed share of adaptation finance, at least a quarter, to locally led delivery. Give farmers, fishers and women's groups seats on the bodies that decide how climate money is spent. And within 30 days of returning, present Parliament with a plain report card of what COP31 delivered and what it did not.
None of these pledges require a new fund or a foreign signature, and none cost much. All of them would do more to restore public faith than any figure announced from a podium. Antalya will judge Bangladesh by its speech. Bangladeshis will judge it by what reaches a salt-hit field in Satkhira, a flooded homestead in Sunamganj and a family repaying a loan after the last cyclone. We urge the prime minister to make sure that, this time, the people at home can see the result.

The writer is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Development Studies and Sustainability (IDSS), United International University (UIU)