Caribbean Countries Urged to Continue 'Punching Above Their Weight' on Climate Change

CASTRIES, St. Lucia – The Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Simon Stiell, is urging the Caribbean to continue “punching above their weight”  and continue to provide world changing ideas as it pertains to the environment and climate change.

Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Simon Stiell (CMC Photo)“The Caribbean is the region that can make the difference now in this time of consequence; we’ve done it before, we can do it again…and so I say to you, build bridges, find solutions and chart a path,” Stiell said as he delivered the 23^rd William G. Demas Memorial Lecture, a highlight of the annual board of governors meeting of the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB).

Speaking on the global climate finance negotiations and the progress on loss and damage funding for developing economies, Stiell told the audience on Tuesday night “our scientists have told us that reaching the 1.5 degree change is still possible, but the window is closing.

” As a region, we punch above our weight in world-changing ideas; just take (Barbados) Prime Minister  (Mia) Mottley’s recent drive to make the regional financial architecture fit for purpose.,” he said in reference to the Bridgetown Initiative, which is seeking, among other things, to reform the way rich countries finance poor countries in a climate crisis..”

Stiell, a former Grenada government minister, said the Caribbean region was one of the front runners pushing for inclusion of the 1.5ºC target in the Paris Agreement of 2015.

“Those negotiating on our behalf knew all too well that 1.5 wasn’t just a commitment, it was a lifeline, and it would require them to be agents of extraordinary change to deliver it. Despite a litany of hurdles, we succeeded.

“ As the science now tells us, the dramatic difference in negative consequences of a world 2°C warmer, rather than 1.5°C, the fact that we managed to secure this ambition to limit global warming to 1.5°C, means we may have changed the whole world for the better as a result,” he said, noting that “1.5ºC is not only inscribed as the stretch commitment in the Paris Agreement, it’s enshrined into action across the entire world economy:.

But he acknowledged that nearly eight years have passed since the world came together around the Paris Agreement and that two things have become clear.

“First, implementation of that agreement is progressing, but secondly, more slowly than required. One hundred and 49 countries now have a net zero target, one hundred and forty-five states and regions now have a net zero target. Two hundred and fifty-two cities now have a net zero target and 929 publicly listed companies now have a net zero target.”

Stiell said that the direction of travel is clear as day and becoming more robust all the time.

He said national government net zero targets, underpinned by legislation or policy documents, have increased in the past two-and-half years from less than 10 to 75 per cent.

“There is no smart CEO in the world today who is not thinking about climate as it relates to their business strategy, their products, their customers and other stakeholders. The Paris Agreement has transformed the world to be far different than it would have been without it.

Of course, the global COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine have not helped in this regard.”

Stiell said the effects of climate change have shown themselves earlier than most people expected, with more devastating consequences.

“Despite all the pledges, collectively, we are far behind in our actions to cut emissions on time.

In the Caribbean in particular, we face the challenges of pledged support and promises going unfilled, high debt burdens, low fiscal space, extreme vulnerability to external shocks, and low economies of scale to name only a few.

“We also know that nearly six trillion US dollars is needed across all sectors in developing countries by 2050 to meet our climate commitments.

“We couldn’t have greater clarity from the scientists, that the scale of the problem is enormous and that there is a cavernous gap between what actions are needed and our political, regulatory and societal response. “

He told the audience into hat gap, fall the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people, entire ecosystems, cultural traditions, hopes and dreams., adding “it is a gap of suffering, deeply and profoundly, at the cost of inaction and delay”.

The senior UN official said that while climate and development agendas have gone hand in hand in this region for decades, perhaps by other titles,  the understanding is engrained.

“Friends, What we need now is a dash of the practical Caribbean ‘How’. In just a few months, the world’s governments and civil society groups will reconvene in Dubai for COP28 to take stock of how we’ve done since Paris: the first official global stocktake”.

He said the meeting will also provide delegates an opportunity to chart a course from there to 2030 “that will put us onto the track we need, and to embed the transformation of the finance agenda to make that course correction possible.

“At this global stocktake, we cannot afford weak or disparate approaches,” he said adding that “at the end of this week, many of us here will travel together to Paris, for an event which is slated to focus on restoring fiscal space, foster private sector development, encourage investment into green infrastructure and mobilize innovative financing”.

Stiell said whatever comes from the event itself, from the climate and development perspective, we need two things, one – more finance, available this year, and two – a roadmap for unlocking significantly more finance between now and the end of the decade.”.

He told the audience that his vision is that the Caribbean region is uniquely placed to bring, bridging, solutions, and a pathway forward.

“At school we were all taught: “An eye for an eye, makes the whole world go blind”. But unfortunately, this is where we find ourselves in our drive for collective progress on climate action – a chicken and egg situation if you will.

“There are countries within the negotiating arena who see it as their role to hold up progress in the negotiations and refuse to take action at home, until sufficient finance is delivered to support it. There are others who refuse to provide all the finance promised, until they see ‘meaningful action’ is being taken elsewhere.”

Stiell said action has to be taken and it has to be taken, by all, now, adding “to take action you need finance as an enabler.

“So both of these things have to happen and they both have to happen right now,” he said, recalling a speech he delivered at the June Intersessional negotiations in Bonn last week that “climate change is not a North vs South issue”.

He said what is needed is a proactive bridge between the two “voices which can champion a progressive third way …which delivers for those that need it most.
”That means action and provision of support to enable further action in an upwards iterative spiral. Voices which hold space for sensible and progressive action,” he said, adding that progressive alliances tend to be issue specific and finding it easier to build common ground around one issue, may that be mitigation action, or the importance of certain ecosystems.

“We need to build common ground across issues, a package of action which will ultimately deliver for us all.

“In the Caribbean, we are uniquely placed to understand what this needs to look like, having experienced climate impacts for generations. Consistently responding to change by building our communities around principles of growth, global integration and sustainability, with one eye constantly on self-sufficiency.

“With our limited resources, we know the struggle of what it takes to keep the lights on, our cupboards filled, our children educated, and opportunities for resilience building taken. We are practical people, we can provide the bridge between approaches which provides the space for more ambition on all issues globally. “

Stiell said that it was the small island states, under the leadership of Antigua and Barbuda as AOSIS Chair, which helped land the definitive outcome of a fund and funding arrangements for loss and damage, recalling it was “a disagreement which had plagued the negotiations for years.

“We will continue to need our regions leadership to bridge between factions and deliver the fund this year, with the support of the Transitional Committee – building the necessary political will for success”

He said the next issue for the region in tackling the global challenge is our size.

“Where creating economies of scale may have been on Mr Demas’s mind when he proposed deeper integration and regionalism, our relatively small size is possibly an opportunity in the climate context. It can be positively exploited to enable an accelerated transition, to be fleet of foot, to be a first mover.”

Stiell said that the Bridgetown Initiative is attempting nothing less than finding a way to provide emergency liquidity, expand multilateral lending to governments by one trillion dollars, and activating private sector savings for climate mitigation, and fund reconstruction after a climate disaster through new multilateral mechanisms.

“That’s a tall order. But delivery starts with putting one foot in front of the other, biting off sections a mouthful at a time.

“The Caribbean is, to a large extent, still dependent on fossil fuels for its energy supply. But no-one wants to be beholden to the international price of oil and gas. Solar and wind are cheaper than ever before. They make more money and pay back far faster than fossil fuels. “

He said energy production globally is shifting from a concentrated, expensive, polluting commodity-based system, to an efficient, manufactured, technology-driven system that offers continuously falling costs and is available everywhere.

He said the world will add a record 440 gigawatts of new renewable capacity this year, double what the International Energy Agency predicted in 2020.

“For the first time this year, renewables are eating into the energy market share. Solar is attracting more capital than oil.

“We cannot end fossil fuel use over night, but we need to put a plan in place for its accelerated replacement by renewables.  Globally, a rapid, but phased and responsible transition away from fossil fuels would bring a raft of benefits to populations and societies.

“National governments and non-governmental organizations are already piloting, and implementing, new financial instruments and other financial products, to support more effective mitigation, adaption, and responses to loss and damage.:”

He made reference to the blue bonds Barbados and Belize have already invested in, saying these effective instruments, in which expensive debt is swapped with debt at a much lower coupon, result in reduced public debt.

“They ensure precious coastlines, that protect the region from climate impacts, that benefit the region’s economies and its peoples’ wellbeing, are set aside to be conserved,” he said, adding “and there is no better positioned region than the Caribbean, along with the other SIDS, to further pioneer innovative financing approaches for managing the climate crisis and buffering against further loss and damage.

Stiell said regional risk pools and insurance providers are already considering opportunities to offer new products and increase accessibility to their services.

The Caribbean Climate Risk and Insurance Facility provides insurance for Caribbean and Central American governments, for fisheries and utilities in their short-term recovery from climate impacts.

Stiell said Jamaica’s innovative catastrophe bond, which secured US$185 million of disaster insurance protection with the assistance of the World Bank and the IBRD Capital-At-Risk notes program.

“This type of financing can help ensure the region isn’t completely economically devastated when the next big hurricane hits, but rather is better prepared and more resilient.

“We are providing the test cases for other Small Island Developing States and regions to build from. We must use our scale as an advantage, to explore ideas and, dare I say it, fail fast.

“We will not meet the scale of the challenge we currently face without testing options and testing them at pace. Now, I am aware, that is not the normal message to give to a room of prudent bankers, but I am not here to provide reassurance, I am here to provide the warning of what will happen if we do not lean in”.

Stiell said his message to multilaterals and international financial institutions “is how important it is to shift our focus from just de-risking projects to de-risking sectoral level finance, to better enable the necessary investment flows into the region at greater scale”.