Kalain Ho­sein

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

The cli­mate cri­sis is a tril­lion-dol­lar prob­lem, while the most af­fect­ed coun­tries – main­ly de­vel­op­ing na­tions and small is­land states—are hav­ing to foot the bill.

As ne­go­tia­tors at COP27 hag­gle over cli­mate fi­nanc­ing for adap­ta­tion, mit­i­ga­tion and loss and dam­age, some coun­tries are look­ing to oth­er means of en­sur­ing they have suf­fi­cient fund­ing to live in a warmer world.

At COP27 here in Egypt, the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da gov­ern­ment has signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with NOAH Re­Gen to de­vel­op the fi­nan­cial in­fra­struc­ture need­ed for the coun­try to fund its green tran­si­tion sus­tain­ably.

NOAH, al­so known as the Net­work of Ocean Am­bas­sadors Head­quar­ters, is an in­ter­na­tion­al group of­fer­ing ocean states so­lu­tions to fast-track their eco­log­i­cal tran­si­tion, in­clud­ing tools for valu­ing their nat­ur­al re­sources, un­lock­ing new sources of in­come (such as car­bon cred­its), at­tract­ing pri­vate funds and trac­ing blend­ed fi­nance projects.

The twin-is­land na­tion of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, sim­i­lar to Trinidad and To­ba­go, is at the front­lines of cli­mate change. The near­ly 100,000 peo­ple who in­hab­it the is­lands live large­ly on the coast and lack the in­fra­struc­ture to de­fend them­selves from ris­ing seas and in­creas­ing­ly fre­quent ex­treme weath­er events. Bar­bu­da was left near­ly un­in­hab­it­able fol­low­ing the pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane Ir­ma in 2017.

With com­mit­ments for loss and dam­age con­tin­u­ing to re­main piti­ful com­pared to the need on the ground, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da aims to be­come a pi­o­neer by lever­ag­ing its eco­log­i­cal wealth—un­lock­ing funds from the car­bon mar­ket.

NOAH Re­Gen will pro­vide the blue­print for this vi­sion, the tech­no­log­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture to build it and the mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary ex­per­tise need­ed to ex­e­cute it.

Ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne, while small is­lands wait for fund­ing arrange­ments from in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies for loss and dam­age, “it is time for us to iden­ti­fy and de­sign po­ten­tial lines of rev­enue that can be de­rived from car­bon mit­i­ga­tion and off­set cred­it mea­sures. We ex­pect this col­lab­o­ra­tion with NOAH Re­Gen to as­sist us to ad­dress our fi­nan­cial chal­lenges to sur­vive cli­mate change.”

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, NOAH Re­Gen CEO and founder Frédéric De­gret said through their Blue Car­bon Lab, satel­lite im­agery and ma­chine learn­ing to process da­ta, they can de­ter­mine how much car­bon is be­ing se­questered in the ocean, un­lock­ing vast car­bon cred­its for small is­land states like An­tigua and Bar­bu­da. He said the coun­try can use the funds raised in car­bon mar­kets, de-risk pri­vate eq­ui­ty and pub­lic fund­ing, and fund due dili­gence and tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance.

Once this NOAH Proof of Con­cept pro­gramme has been suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed for An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, the mod­el can be eas­i­ly rolled out to the rest of SIDS—whose com­bined Ex­clu­sive Eco­nom­ic Zone rep­re­sents more than 25 per cent of the to­tal glob­al ma­rine ex­clu­sive eco­nom­ic zone.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion is now en­ter­ing phase one and NOAH Re­Gen will soon be­gin con­duct­ing a de­tailed analy­sis of the na­tion’s pro­tect­ed ar­eas. Then, with its in­ter­na­tion­al car­bon ver­i­fi­ca­tion part­ners, it will iden­ti­fy re­li­able sources of car­bon cred­its that can be put in the glob­al mar­ket and traced along their en­tire lifes­pan.

NOAH Re­Gen, ac­cord­ing to De­gret, is al­so in ear­ly talks with Grena­da and is en­thu­si­as­tic about com­ing to T&T to un­lock the blue car­bon mar­ket.

Fund­ing Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment

Ex­perts say car­bon fi­nance and car­bon mar­kets will be key for im­ple­ment­ing Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (ND­Cs), and the Paris Agree­ment en­ables the use of such mar­ket mech­a­nisms through Ar­ti­cle 6.

In T&T’s case, the Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­ment Pro­gramme es­ti­mat­ed it would cost US$2 Bil­lion to meet the coun­try’s ND­Cs of re­duc­ing 15 per cent of emis­sions across three ma­jor emit­ting sec­tors—pow­er gen­er­a­tion, trans­port and in­dus­try.

How­ev­er, to un­der­stand car­bon mar­kets, you must first un­der­stand car­bon cred­its. Car­bon cred­its, al­so known as car­bon off­sets, are per­mits that al­low the own­er (like high-emis­sion coun­tries, fos­sil fu­el com­pa­nies, etc.) to emit a cer­tain amount of car­bon diox­ide or oth­er green­house gas­es. One cred­it per­mits the emis­sion of one ton of car­bon diox­ide or the equiv­a­lent in oth­er green­house gas­es. Those that can­not eas­i­ly re­duce emis­sions can still op­er­ate at a high­er fi­nan­cial cost.

Ne­go­tia­tors at the Glas­gow COP26 sum­mit in 2021 agreed to cre­ate a glob­al car­bon cred­it off­set trad­ing mar­ket—one area where car­bon cred­its can be sold and bought.

Then, there is the Blue Econ­o­my. The UN de­fines it as “an econ­o­my com­pris­ing a range of eco­nom­ic sec­tors and re­lat­ed poli­cies that de­ter­mine whether the use of ocean re­sources is sus­tain­able.”

There are al­so Debt-For-Na­ture swaps. It in­volves pur­chas­ing for­eign debt (like loans coun­tries take from in­ter­na­tion­al and mul­ti­lat­er­al banks), con­vert­ing that debt in­to lo­cal cur­ren­cy and us­ing the pro­ceeds to fund con­ser­va­tion ac­tiv­i­ties.

This sto­ry was pro­duced as part of the 2022 Cli­mate Change Me­dia Part­ner­ship, a jour­nal­ism fel­low­ship or­gan­ised by In­ternews’ Earth Jour­nal­ism Net­work and the Stan­ley Cen­tre for Peace and Se­cu­ri­ty.