Bangladesh’s climate vulnerability has been a long-acknowledged crisis, but new Climate Debt Risk Index 2025 (CDRI’25) findings suggesting the possibility of us falling into a dangerous climate debt in the near future is certainly cause for alarm.
As the country has grown increasingly dependent on loans to fund essential climate adaptation measures, the risks of that are now threatening to compete with the environmental ones. This is alarming not only because climate impacts are accelerating, but because the very measures meant to protect us may be placing an unsustainable burden on the nation’s future.
This demands far greater urgency than we are demonstrating at the moment.
While our need for a stronger and more assertive approach towards climate resilience is nothing short of pressing, if the climate funds supposedly meant to help us tackle the many threats facing our nation drive us farther down a debt trap, we must ask the question: Is this truly the way out?
The issue, of course, is not the borrowing itself, but the disproportionate burden placed on climate-vulnerable nations like ours, who are forced to pay the price for a global crisis that we had little hand in causing.
The remedy lies in coordinated efforts, both domestically and internationally, to continue demanding the rightful funds that are used efficiently, transparently, and with strict monitoring.
Most importantly, our climate financing strategies must prioritize sustainable practices; we have to do our part to reduce our over-reliance on expensive loans that are doing more harm than good for us.
We as a nation simply cannot afford to fall into another instance of financial distress, especially when so much of our future is at stake.
