By Caribbean Times -November 7,2023
Guyana is the first country to deploy large-scale carbon on the international market as the CARICOM country seeks to advance its climate security. It is the first country to sign an end-user agreement with Hess Corporation and a bilateral agreement on the sale of carbon with the Kingdom of Norway. Guyana’s forest, which is the second-largest forest cover globally, stores 19.5 gigatonnes of carbon, and the country has released its Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) 2030, which is an enhanced version of the LCDS 2009, taking into account several local and international developments that focus on investments in clean energy to stimulate low-carbon growth, protection against climate change and biodiversity loss.
Last December, the government and Hess Corporation announced an agreement for Hess to purchase high-quality carbon credits for a minimum of US$750 million between 2022 and 2032.
But, Caribbean countries continue to argue that more than incremental progress is needed. They acknowledge that taking small steps when significant steps are required would be a mistake too costly to bear, even as they recognize a growing push to deliver reforms from the Bridgetown Initiative. Ahead of COP 27 in Glasgow, Barbados, Prime Minister Mia Mottley announced the Bridgetown Initiative, a political agenda for reform of the global financial architecture and development finance in the context of three intersecting global crises, namely debt, climate, and inflation. It proposes that an automatic debt suspension in the case of an emergency be included in all lending in the future—but this needs to be applied to all debt, retroactively and across the board, to make a real difference.
Last Thursday, the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) announced plans to establish a Climate Change Project Preparation Fund to assist its borrowing member countries (BMCs) identify and developing viable proposals to access climate finance from the bank and other international donor organizations. The CDB said despite significant vulnerability and considerable needs, Caribbean countries have needed more success in securing funding for climate action initiatives, noting that among the obstacles are the extensive prerequisites and project preparation necessary to qualify for concessional finance from development partners and multilateral climate funds.
“Right now, climate finance flows to the Caribbean pale in comparison to the needs of the region, and a major barrier is the challenges we face putting together viable proposals because the process can be resource-intensive, and it can require specialized expertise,” said Valerie Isaac, CDB’s Division Chief, Environmental Sustainability.
She said the CDB’s Climate Change Project Preparation Fund would provide resources to develop and implement climate action projects, enabling the Region to mobilize climate finance at a much greater level. When she addressed the United Nations General Assembly in October, Mottley said the fight against climate change is far from over, adding that it is as much of a crisis as the war in Ukraine and the ongoing conflict in Africa. “We are committed to resume the battle of saving people and the planet,” she said.
But as Stiell pointed out, “the geopolitics surrounding the climate agenda, which is east versus west, global north versus global south, has never been as fractured and inflammatory as we have now going into this COP.
”It has never been this tricky…but we have to find a path forward,” he added.
