At COP27, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley made headlines with the ambitious Bridgetown Initiative, a policy systems initiative that aims to work with stakeholders to make the global financial architecture truly reflect the vulnerability and existing climate-financing Many of the barriers can be broken down. LDC and SIDS.
Too often the debate over financing for climate change and other development issues is reduced to a limited analysis of raw GDP numbers or debt ratios, rather than an understanding of how economies work and the unique challenges faced by small and vulnerable countries. has a more subtle understanding. To contribute to this debate the Commonwealth Secretariat has launched Universal Vulnerability Index (UVI) (2021) which is set to yield more refined insights on the state of vulnerability and resilience of a country.
The UVI separates measurements for structural resilience and structural vulnerability, therefore placing less emphasis on a snapshot of nominal GDP and building in a flexible ranking of a country’s ability to rebuild.
The Commonwealth Secretariat is taking targeted action through initiatives such as Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub Successfully tried and tested Commonwealth initiative to help small and vulnerable member states access finance and scale up climate action. The hub was launched in 2016 and has already supported member states to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in climate finance, with hundreds of millions more in the pipeline.
A more recent project’Their Future, Our Action‘ project, a collaboration between the Commonwealth Secretariat and the University of Cambridge Center for Resilience and Sustainable Development (CRSD), commissions ground-breaking action-based research to support the deployment of greater sustainability-related funds in SIDS, including how to fully harness climate and resilience finance. The project has already borne fruit, Unlocking over USD 10 million private financing for Small Island Developing States, A key outcome from the research so far is the identification of vast untapped assets of SIDS in their young populations and their natural assets, which can be leveraged to catalyze greater climate finance flows into SIDS. An important part of the project is developing investment measures that reward SIDS for good stewardship of their natural assets.
If the world is to come together and tackle the real and pressing issues facing LDCs and SIDS, it is essential that developed countries honor their commitments and pledge funding and related technical assistance. Every promise needs to be delivered and every option explored to enable Commonwealth member states – indeed all countries everywhere – to adequately tackle the mammoth task of climate change.
For if we fail in this task, and fall into disharmony and discord, we will fail not only this generation but all generations to come and inevitably see the diverse chorus of smaller and weaker states climate change. fall prey to the worst effects of change and lose their voice forever. ,
* The Rt Hon Patricia Scotland Casey is the Commonwealth Secretary General and Dr Nazia Mintz Habib is the FRSA Founder, Center for Resilience and Sustainable Development.