Small Islands, Big Agenda: The Pacific Island Countries Climate Leadership and Access to Finance

Small Islands, Big Agenda: The Pacific Island Countries Climate Leadership and Access to Finance

Date: Oct 24, 2022

Time: 08:00 to 09:30 (KST/GMT+9)

Overview:

SIDS are being disproportionately and increasingly impacted by the impacts of climate change while their special circumstances make them extremely vulnerable to other external shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic. SIDS urgently need access to external financial support and capacity to aid their pandemic recovery efforts and to build resilience between the social, economic, and natural systems on which they depend. However, the current climate and development finance architecture is exceedingly complex and unequipped to operate efficiently, fairly, and at the speed and scale needed to meet Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDs) needs.

Further, despite the relatively small landmass, Pacific Island Countries (PICs) have some of the largest national ocean areas (Exclusive Economic Zones) in the world. Spanning millions of square kilometers, these ocean areas are the single largest asset for PICs and there is strong interest to sustainably leverage these assets to build blue economies. Blue economy sectors range from fisheries, aquaculture/ mariculture, renewable energy, shipping, waste management, tourism, marine protection and more. However, viable solutions are needed to sustainably finance the blue economy transformation. A blue bond helps ring in much needed private sector and development partner finance through debt financing to support blue economy investments.

The Climate Finance Access Network (CFAN) is a direct response to this need. Coordinated by RMI and funded with an initial contribution of CAD $9.5 million from the Government of Canada, CFAN is a global network designed to provide a prompt and practical solution to the climate finance bottleneck in SIDS, Least Developed Countries and African countries. In July 2021, CFAN partnered with GGGI to announce the first eight countries to receive dedicated advisors for climate finance. Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu will receive advisors specifically trained and placed to unlock critical climate finance in developing countries.  

CFAN advisors are working together with PSIDS to increase access finance for Adaptation and build resilience to climate change.

This session aims to:

– Spotlight Samoa and discuss the unresolved challenges that block access to climate finance for Small Island Developing States.

– Demonstrate successful approaches to adaptation financing in Pacific SIDS though the support of CFAN advisors; and

– Discuss challenges and solutions on implementing a blue economic model by highlighting Blue Bonds in Fiji and its replicability to other Pacific SIDS