The Caribbean continues to trail the world with both access to available climate funds and implementation of climate resilient projects. Several institutional leaders highlighted challenges in accessing global climate funds at a joint event hosted on the margins of the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 29), in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Executive Director of the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC), Colin Young, stated that the Caribbean is the least funded region under the Global Climate Fund reportedly accessing only USD 5 million of available resources. “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.”

The Caribbean Development Bank’s (CDB) Acting Director of Projects L. O’Reilly Lewis who moderated the session entitled “Climate Finance Effectiveness in the Caribbean” shared the current state of affairs, indicating that “while there has been a significant expansion in climate finance for developing countries like those in the Caribbean and 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.”

Division Chief, Environmental Sustainability at CDB, Valerie Isaac shared the Bank is actively addressing this challenge affirming that “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.”

CDB 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 programmes 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 has also mobilised Project Preparation Facility (PPF) grants to support the development of three large-scale capital projects.

Other panelists 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 Caribbean nations.

Panelist Rodinald Soomer, Chief Executive Officer, CARICOM Development Fund (CDF) advanced recommendations to improve the current track record suggesting that “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 recognised by the loss and damage fund as actors and viable partners that can bring the climate finance to the region… We also need to strengthen our partnerships with donors that are active in the space.”  Offering the recently launched Caribbean Community Resilience Fund as an example regional financing innovation he indicated that scaling up is an urgent imperative.

Meanwhile Paul Hilaire, Permanent Secretary, Government of Saint Lucia described that country’s project experiences. He highlighted 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.”

Marko Davila, Senior Social Development Specialist (Fragility and Conflict), European Investment Bank (EIB) endorsed a more programmatic approach to implementation of climate projects by Caribbean governments and institutions. He signalled that greater flexibility was being pursued by some funding agencies and partners to further integrate the needs of Caribbean and other Small Island Developing States (SIDS) with regard to accessibility and efficacy of climate financing to address some of the accessibility challenges.