By: Staff Writer
October 14, 2022
The Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank said that the Caribbean is at the “frontline” of the climate crisis and not only are weather events seven times higher in the Caribbean than in other regions, the infrastructural damage is six times higher than anywhere in the world as well.
Timothy Antoine said at a “Capacity and Development” discussion hosted by the International Monetary Fund said that because of these realities there are significant challenges for capacity development and financing.
He added: “So for the Caribbean pursuing resilience has to be a relentless, lifelong pursuit, given our vulnerability.” Explaining what resilience means in the Caribbean context, he said: “The way we think about resilience in the Caribbean is the capacity to withstand and absorb shocks, recover and bounce forward… Because given the structured issues in the region, it’s not enough to simply get back to where we were, we have to constantly think about how we build resilience to reduce our vulnerability…”
The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ELCAC) developed the Caribbean Resilience Fund (CRF) as an innovative mechanism to leverage absolutely necessary finance for development while simultaneously reducing the growing and onerous debt burden. Three pilot economies of Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Climate financing has also been a significant part of the Caribbean Community’s theme as of late with the Prime Ministers of The Bahamas and Barbados making the need for climate financing more important in this communications on the challenges the region faces from high carbon emitting countries.
Mr Antoine also said that the Caribbean has to have a “growth mind-set” on tackling the climate and environment challenge and thinking about resilience. “It means that as policymakers and advisors, we have to evolve as we deal with immediate crises, such as cost of living, the pandemic. We have to press forward with structural reforms, those require capacity development.”
He also said: “We have to build capacity amongst regulators, amongst central banks, amongst ministries of finance, to do two things: risk management, that is to say, to assess risk, both transaction risk and fiscal physical risks. But we have to do more than that. We also have to do green finance, because… if all we do is assess risk in the Caribbean, we will simply confirm what we already know to be true that we are high risk region in respect of climate.”
This means that the Caribbean has to step up its game when it comes to assessing the financing necessary to build capacity to weather climate impact. But unfortunately, out of the $270bn in green bonds that were issued globally in 2020, not one dollar came to the Caribbean Mr Antoine said. “So even as we demand that countries meet their obligations and commitments under the Paris agreement, we must also take an initiative in the Caribbean to build out a green finance market to tap into regional savings for example, which is estimated around $50bn dollars.”