This Civil Society Response to the Climate Budget Report is a co-production of ActionAid Bangladesh (AAB), the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), Action on Climate Today (ACT) and a wide range of civil society participants who attended a series of climate budget workshops.
ActionAid is a global justice federation working to achieve social justice, gender equality and poverty eradication with over 15 million people in 45 countries across the globe. ActionAid started its operations in Bangladesh in 1983. As a member of the Federation, AAB works to achieve its mission and vision in four major areas: women’s rights and gender equity; resilience and climate justice; democratic governance; and young people.
Furthermore, AAB responds to humanitarian crises in rural and urban spaces with the aim of protecting lives and building resilience.
As a social justice organisation, AAB facilitates people to lead campaigns to claim their rights by challenging inequality and unjust structural causes of poverty. AAB has been campaigning on the issues of water justice, climate justice, tax justice, the
right to food, safe cities for women and girls and gender- responsive public services. Over the past decade, AAB has been working from grassroots to global level for a mechanism that ensures climate justice.
The International Centre for Climate Change and Development is a research and training centre based at the Independent University, Bangladesh in Dhaka working on climate change and development issues in Bangladesh and globally. ICCCAD’s mission is to gain and distribute knowledge on climate change and specifically adaptation, and thereby help people adapt to climate change, with a focus on the global South. ICCCAD’s activities focus on building capacity and training future and current leaders on climate change and development; conducting research to generate peer-reviewed publications, with a focus on climate change adaptation; and building and leading a network of partners. Through the expertise of ICCCAD and its local partners, international organisations are being exposed to relevant and grounded knowledge that is shared and transmitted around the world. The key strategic goal of ICCCAD is to become a globally recognised centre of excellence on climate change research and capacity-building.
Action on Climate Today is a five-year initiative that works closely with governments in South Asia to build resilience to the impacts of climate change. Funded by the UK Department for International Development, ACT works with the aim of helping partner governments integrate climate change into their policies, plans and budgets. ACT is providing technical support to 11 governments, which include 5 national governments and 6 sub- national governments: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and India (the states of Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Maharashtra and Odisha). In addition to providing technical< support to government, ACT works to strengthen countries’ capacity to attract and leverage climate change investment. The authors would like to thank the International Budget Partnership for their review of early drafts and helpful comments.