Kalain Ho­sein

There were some dis­ap­point­ments at COP27.

The even­tu­al Sharm el-Sheikh Im­ple­men­ta­tion Plan lacked strong lan­guage or res­o­lu­tions on re­duc­ing fos­sil fu­el us­age, lacked strength­en­ing net-ze­ro pledges and Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions to meet de­car­boniza­tion goals that sup­port lim­it­ing warm­ing to 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius above pre-in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion lev­els.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to Rac­quel Moses, the on­ly Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC) glob­al Am­bas­sador rep­re­sent­ing Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States and the Caribbean and the CEO of the Caribbean Cli­mate-Smart Ac­cel­er­a­tor (CC­SA), there were sev­er­al sil­ver lin­ings to take note of.

She said, “In ad­di­tion to the con­sen­sus on Loss and Dam­age, which will pro­vide a lot of nec­es­sary fund­ing for cli­mate-im­pact­ed com­mu­ni­ties glob­al­ly, COP27 al­so saw the first pavil­ions for youth, in­dige­nous peo­ple and cli­mate jus­tice—a def­i­nite shift to­wards more in­clu­sive de­ci­sion-mak­ing.”

Caribbean ex­cel­lence and pri­vate sec­tor fi­nanc­ing were both on show at the CC­SA In­vestor Fo­rum, and as point­ed out by Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley at COP27, “The re­gion will ex­plore ways of lever­ag­ing the IMF and World Bank for in­vest­ment funds.”

Moses added, “The in­ter­est from the pri­vate sec­tor to fi­nance re­silience-build­ing projects has con­tin­ued to grow. The re­sult in Sharm el-Sheikh leaves a lot to work with.”

At COP27, Moses’ or­gan­i­sa­tion, CC­SA, had three ob­jec­tives.

First­ly, CC­SA high­light­ed the need for fit-for-pur­pose fund­ing through grants and phil­an­thropic fund­ing to take many of the re­gion’s cli­mate-re­silient projects from con­cept to bank­a­bil­i­ty.

To do this, Moses an­nounced that the Caribbean Blend­ed Fi­nance for Re­silience Fund, to help fi­nance re­new­able en­er­gy projects in the re­gion, has re­ceived fund­ing from the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank with the sup­port of the gov­ern­ment of Cana­da.

Show­cas­ing one of the projects with­in the Caribbean at the Cari­com Pavil­ion at COP27, the CC­SA pre­sent­ed its fourth In­vestor Fo­rum, pre­view­ing Do­mini­ca’s Na­tion­al Fi­nanc­ing Ve­hi­cle to com­mer­cialise its vast ge­ot­her­mal po­ten­tial.

At the event, Francine Baron, CEO of the Cli­mate Re­silience Ex­e­cu­tion Agency for Do­mini­ca, ex­plained that ge­ot­her­mal projects dri­ve the coun­try’s shift to a sus­tain­able econ­o­my.

Baron added that it is al­so an es­sen­tial path­way to­ward de­vel­op­ing a Caribbean Sin­gle En­er­gy Ex­port Mar­ket for green hy­dro­gen. She said Do­mini­ca is eye­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go as a po­ten­tial mar­ket for green hy­dro­gen.

The sec­ond ob­jec­tive re­volved around ad­vo­ca­cy for Loss and Dam­age fund­ing, for which they agreed to cre­ate a fa­cil­i­ty for at COP27, with de­tails to be hashed out at COP28 next year.

She added that there were al­so pos­i­tive move­ments with the cre­ation of the Glob­al Shield by Ger­many and the G7.

This sep­a­rate fi­nan­cial mech­a­nism will be used as dis­as­ter re­lief to strength­en so­cial pro­tec­tion schemes and pro­vide some cli­mate risk in­sur­ance.

Many of the Caribbean is­lands, in­clud­ing T&T, have para­met­ric dis­as­ter in­sur­ance for events such as trop­i­cal cy­clones, ex­cess rain­fall and earth­quakes through the Caribbean Cat­a­stro­phe Risk In­sur­ance Fa­cil­i­ty.

Last­ly, CC­SA aimed to high­light Glob­al South in­no­va­tion.

In­no­va­tions in­clud­ed a cli­mate-smart map in de­ter­min­ing where the Caribbean re­gion is against our ob­jec­tives, the fund­ing flows need­ed to reach these ob­jec­tives, and the re­silience score­card, which tracks ar­eas of need and di­rects fi­nanc­ing in­to the sec­tors with the most crit­i­cal re­quire­ments.

In ad­di­tion, the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank has al­so de­vel­oped the Re­cov­ery Du­ra­tion Ad­juster (RDA), a tool to cap­ture coun­tries’ vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty based on the time it would take them to re­cov­er from the im­pacts of a cli­mate event.

Moses said this is a mech­a­nism that the Ac­cel­er­a­tor hopes to see rolled out glob­al­ly, as a re­place­ment for GDP per capi­ta as a mea­sure of ac­cess to con­ces­sion­ary fi­nance.

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.