By Kimberly Ramkhalawan
May 12, 2023
The European Union (EU) officially launched its €35-million climate action programme EUROCLIMA, in the Caribbean region on Wednesday on the island of Barbados. The Caribbean launch comes after over a decade of successful implementation in Latin America. Its launch was held at the recently rehabilitated Walkers Reserve, a centre for regenerative work, which reinforces the key messages and the commitments under the programme.
EUROCLIMA, is part of the EU’s Global investment agenda, and is geared toward partnering with the region as its flagship cooperation programme on environmental sustainability and climate change impacting all 33 countries within the LAC region, with the objective of reducing the impact of climate change and its effects by fostering climate mitigation, adaptation, resilience and investment.
Ambassador Malgorzata Wasilewska, Ambassador of the European Union to Barbados, the Eastern Caribbean States, the OECS, CARICOM/ CARIFORUM, was present for the launch and in answering the question as to what EUROCLIMA could do with these islands, she drew examples of its program’s success in parts of Latin America. Citing countries like Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay, the Ambassador shared where the program helped in supporting climate policy strategies, along with greener, low carbon economic resilience to climate change. She added that in Panama the program was supporting a ‘taxonomy of sustainable finance with its Central Bank which directs private capital, facilitating access to climate finance where it is a priority’.
In Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador, the Ambassador shared how it was able to facilitate supporting hydro-meteorological information to guide farmers and feed into risk disaster management plans in case of droughts and flooding, where water and water management was required, while in Brazil and Chile, it has supported the development of Green-hydrogen and support its investment.
She noted these were the kind of important areas the program was intent on helping in the region, and extending EUROCLIMA to the Caribbean was an element of the EU and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Partnership providing a new and flexible mechanism for the EU to deliver in the Caribbean.
To Ambassador Wasilewska, the launch this week comes as an opportunity to celebrate ‘team Europe’ with Tuesday this week marking Europe Day, and EUROCLIMA, as “a demonstration of European partners towards a coherent and comprehensive climate partnership with the region, with it going beyond the EU, with its partnerships involving UNEP, UNDP, and ECLAC”.
Dr Armstrong Alexis, Deputy Secretary-General CARICOM Secretariat remarking at the Caribbean launch of the program, says it is a welcomed one to the region as it offers the much needed technical and financial support to the regeneration of its islands geared toward climate mitigation, through green and climatic transition related actions in four thematic of climate adaption, renewable energy, circular economies and biodiversity.
He says the EUROCLIMA model is welcomed, as it avoids putting additional pressures on governments through the system of pre-existing capacities and constraints and through the use of regional implementing entities such as the GIZ, UNDP and AFD taking on most of the work with no requirements for the co-financing of projects on the part of member states of CARICOM.
However, Dr. Alexis underscored ‘the importance of the envisaged country dialogues and regional dialogues in shaping the intervention for the region is a critical step’.
In recognizing the many benefits of such a project for the region, Dr. Alexis raised some areas he thinks will be necessary to EUROCLIMA’s success in the Caribbean, including the need for projects designed to always be “solution oriented and have sustainability built into the projects’ success to ensure that communities benefit”. He also urges that “interventions through focus on creating the enabling environment, be set out to “achieve the region’s goals in the identified project areas”. And while Dr.Alexis notes that there are “no specific allocation for states, there is need to ensure balance and equitability, and called for country dialogue to identify the country priorities, and to seek to scale them upwards as applicable as possible”.
The Deputy SG also called for projects be aligned with goals set out by ministerial and heads of government CARICOM meetings.
Minister Shawn Edwards, Minister of Sustainable Development and Education, Government of Saint Lucia and Chair of the Ministers of Environment of COTED and the CDEMA says while he welcomed the funding support, he called for regional countries to be responsible with technical officers leading the way in accountability to ensure that the benefits are maximized with the returns through the EUROCLIMA project.
Shantal Munro-Knight, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office with responsibility for Culture and National Focal Point for Barbados for the European Union and Rep of host country, sees it as a moment of inflection, given the times Caribbean countries currently exist in, with climate crisis looming at all states, and in order to address this, she underscored the need for partnerships, internationally and locally with agents at home.
To mark the occasion, trees were planted to add to the regeneration of Walkers Reserve, a park which stands testament to the transformation of one of the largest sand quarries in the region, amassing to some 277 acres. The once large sand quarry which provided building materials on the island was transformed through permaculture practices and different regenerative agro-forestry approaches with its planting of 285 000 trees representing ‘One Tree For Every Bajan Programme’.