DHAKA, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- The Bangladeshi government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Thursday signed an agreement for the implementation of a project aimed at benefiting hundreds of thousands of people in the country's disaster-prone areas.
The 33 million U.S. dollars project titled "Enhancing adaptive capacities of coastal communities, especially women, to cope with climate change induced salinity," financed by the Green Climate Fund (GCF), will benefit some 700,00 people from the disaster prone Satkhira and Khulna districts in southwestern Bangladesh with a focus on women and adolescent girls, UNDP said in a statement.
The project, the first of its kind in Bangladesh, will implement and manage climate-resilient solutions in the next six years. The country's Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs provided 8 million U.S. dollars along with GCF who are providing the rest of the funds as a co-financer.
Attending the signing ceremony, Sudipto Mukerjee, resident representative of UNDP Bangladesh, said "the project will limit the impact of climate change as much as possible so that Bangladesh's commitment to attain the Sustainable Development Goals is smooth, leaving no one behind."
He stressed the importance on bringing transformative changes in the lives of marginalized women through this project to set an example for other countries.
Monowar Ahmed, secretary of Bangladesh's External Relations Division said "the government is committed to building a climate resilient Bangladesh and this project will particularly help women and girls to fight climate change."
