Caribbean development organizations say they continue to trail the world as it relates to accessing available climate funds and implementation of climate-resilient projects.
Speaking of the region’s challenges at an event hosted on the sidelines of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29), the executive director of Belize-based Caribbean Climate Change Centre (CCCC), Dr Colin Young, said the Caribbean is the least funded region under the Global Climate Fund reportedly accessing only US$5 million of available resources.
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“We’re behind Asia-Pacific, we’re behind the Least Developed Countries and we’re behind Africa…while we are agitating for changing of rules that would be more fit-for-purpose…we must also ensure that there are demands made for the simplification of the access architecture and reducing of the fragmentation of the donor relationships,” Young said.
The acting director of projects at the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), L. O’Reilly Lewis, said that while there has been a significant expansion in climate finance for developing countries like those in the Caribbean, “there remains a need to enable the shift towards low emission climate resilience to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, ensuring the underlying quality or effectiveness of climate finance is also crucial.”
The event was held under the theme ‘Climate Finance Effectiveness in the Caribbean’ and the Division Chief, of Environmental Sustainability at CDB, Valerie Isaac, said the financial institution is actively addressing this challenge.
“The quality and quantity of climate finance is important for its effectiveness and in the case of the Caribbean scaling up this finance requires multi-faceted approaches. These approaches need to address both the immediate financial needs as well as the longer-term sustainability of the sort of climate action required in the region,” she said.
The CDB said it is engaging global resources to assist the Caribbean with its coordination and collaboration and the simplification of the climate finance architecture.
The bank is leveraging partnerships through its soon-to-be-established climate change preparation fund which will assist in circumventing key barriers inhibiting those finance flows in the region.
CDB is also working with its member countries to develop an ambitious pipeline of programs and projects for co-financing from the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which will be catalytic in scaling up investment in climate action in the Caribbean.
CDB said it has also mobilized Project Preparation Facility (PPF) grants to support the development of three large-scale capital projects.
The panel also discussed the challenges of delays and the importance of building strong partnerships with donors while also endorsing more flexible approaches tailored to the needs of the Caribbean.
The chief executive officer of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Development Fund (CDF), Rodinald Soomer, advanced recommendations to improve the current track record.
“We need to strengthen our relationships with the climate funds that have been established, including the loss and damage fund…ensuring that those of us…already in the space are recognized by the loss and damage fund as actors and viable partners that can bring the climate finance to the region,” he said.
“We also need to strengthen our partnerships with donors that are active in the space,” he added, noting that the recently launched Caribbean Community Resilience Fund is an example of regional financing innovation.
A senior St Lucia government official, Paul Hilaire, spoke of the prolonged timeframe for the funding agencies to make the monies available at the national level.
“Whether it be climate finance or…any other donor agency…there seems to be an inordinately long period of time,” he said.
Senior Social Development Specialist at the European Investment Bank (EIB), Marko Davila, endorsed a more programmatic approach to the implementation of climate projects by Caribbean governments and institutions.
He said that greater flexibility was being pursued by some funding agencies and partners to further integrate the needs of the Caribbean and other Small Island Developing States (SIDS) concerning accessibility and efficacy of climate financing to address some of the accessibility challenges.
The COP 29 conference ends in Azerbaijan on Friday. (CMC)
