Govt sets Tk 1bn budget to fight climate change impacts

The interim government has allocated Tk 1 billion in the proposed budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year to address the serious and growing risks of climate change.

Finance Adviser Salehuddin Ahmed disclosed this while presenting the budget, highlighting Bangladesh’s vulnerability to climate impacts. To combat these challenges, the Climate Change Trust Fund is undertaking efforts such as preventing air, water, and soil pollution, managing waste, promoting environmental development, mitigating climate change, assessing health impacts, enhancing women's adaptive capacity, evaluating coastal ecosystems, and building media capacity for climate resilience.

As part of a time-bound reform plan, a digital monitoring system for all approved projects under the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust is set to be implemented by December 2025.

A Multisectoral Action Plan for Sustainable Plastic Management has been developed to reduce plastic waste. In accordance with the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2021, 17 products have been identified as single-use plastics, and measures are underway to regulate their use.

New policies have been introduced, including the National Award for Tree Plantation Policy (Amendment)-2025 and the National Award Policy for Wildlife Conservation-2025.

Currently, forest cover accounts for only 15.58 per cent of the country’s land. To increase this, 1,303 acres of forest land have been reclaimed, afforestation efforts have been undertaken, and the allocation of 720 acres of land previously assigned to various agencies has been cancelled as part of forest restoration initiatives.