Judith Slater | UK proud to be working with allies to close climate finance gap

THIS YEAR’S COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai comes seven years after the signature of the groundbreaking Paris Agreement, which signalled a watershed moment in the international approach to the climate crisis, with a legally binding, near-global treaty on limiting global warming. After a period of haggling over the setting of emissions reduction targets and policy development, the discussion is now turning to the financing of desperately needed climate action.

Decision-makers at COP28 focussed on such action during Climate Finance Day on Monday, December 4. The UK wants to see a bigger, better, fairer international financial system addressing poverty and climate change. Indeed, we are concerned that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are in danger of not being met by 2030. So, this week we have endorsed the new Global Climate Finance Framework, pushing for all parties to deliver on their commitment to widening access to financing. To support this, the UK also announced a US$611-million portfolio of investments.

Nowhere is the finance question more critical than in climate-vulnerable small island developing states (SIDS) like Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. These countries face a variety of unique challenges when tapping into finance to deal with climate change impacts. It can be particularly difficult to prepare projects which are ‘bankable’ and to access different funding streams, be they grants or loans, at concessional rates. The private sector is often less inclined to invest in riskier projects, but SDG 13 cannot be achieved without significant investments in both adaptation and mitigation. That is why the UK is working collaboratively with the Jamaican Government and other partners to pilot new, practical approaches for accessing climate finance, with the hope that this can then be replicated across the Caribbean.

Earlier this year, the UK announced a US$8.7m contribution from the Task Force on Access to Finance to test innovative approaches for accessing climate finance. The UK also signed an agreement worth US$3.4m with the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre to help CARICOM member states address the specific challenges they face in accessing and utilising climate finance.

Internationally, climate action has traditionally been broken down into two areas: mitigation (reduction of greenhouse gas emissions); and adaptation (taking action to adjust to the current and projected impacts of climate change). Both are critical if humanity is to tackle this existential crisis.

However, for too long there has been a greater focus on mitigation efforts, often at the expense of adaptation finance – which does not reflect the needs of small island states. In fact, it does not reflect the minimal contribution of small islands to global warming. Mitigation efforts in SIDS are really about sustainable and affordable energy security and not about greenhouse gas emissions; adaptation is a more urgent need to make buildings, agriculture and jobs more resilient to the negative impacts of a changing climate. The UK believes that there needs to be a greater balance between the two and successfully pushed for a commitment to double adaptation finance at COP26 in Glasgow. We have also committed to tripling the amount we spend on adaptation internationally from £500m in 2019 to £1.5bn in 2025. It can be difficult to attract private investment for adaptation work, so the UK delivers approximately 90 per cent of its adaptation finance in grants. And while we are pleased to see multilateral development banks across the world increasing their adaptation spend, we’d like to see them pursue more ambitious targets.

Moreover, the world has realised that more needs to be done to address loss and damage from climate change impacts, when adaptation efforts are not enough. An agreement was reached at COP27 to establish a Loss and Damage Fund, and the UK has been working with a range of countries to design this fund over the past year. It is fantastic that their recommendations were adopted on the first day of COP28, including a UK proposal to set a minimum allocation for particularly climate-vulnerable countries. The UK also announced a contribution of US$76m towards the fund.

The UK spent around US$4b from 2021 to 2022 on international climate finance, and has recently committed another US$2b to the Green Climate Fund. It now looks as if it will be confirmed that the developed world met its US$100b-per-year goal for climate finance in 2022. This is good news, but we need more, and fast. Which is why we need to get work started on a new goal at this year’s COP, with agreement on a structure for the goal this year, rather than leaving it all to 2024.

Through the Inter-American Development Bank, the UK has provided US$25 million to fund the Caribbean Water Utilities Insurance Collective to help water and sanitation companies across 29 territories in the Caribbean access affordable insurance. Jamaica is expected to be one of the first countries to take up this new insurance offer.

At this stage in the world’s journey to tackle this existential crisis, there is no doubt that the challenge is surmountable only through strong international collaboration. The COP28 agreement on the Loss and Damage Fund is evidence that we can pull together and find compromises and common ground. The UK is proud to be working together with Caribbean partners to face that challenge in practical, transformative ways.

Judith Slater is the British high commissioner to Jamaica. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.