CANARI Policy Brief No. 30: Impacts of US policy shifts on Caribbean climate finance – and possible ways forward

The Caribbean is among the most exposed regions in the world to climate change impacts and least financially able to bear the costs of adaptation. International climate finance, through mechanisms created under the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC), are meant to shift the cost burden from developing countries to wealthier ones that have historically been most responsible for climate change. Caribbean countries have put these sources of finance at the centre of their climate adaptation strategies in the hopes that they will offer both a long-term and a just solution.

But they have faced steep challenges in securing climate finance because of institutional constraints to meeting onerous funding conditionalities. So while their special needs have received considerable lip service, their actual success has been modest. Funding secured to date from the major international sources – the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the Adaptation Fund and the Global Environment Facility – has totaled only around US$800 million, a fraction of the US$14 billion per year that the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has estimated will be needed.

Read the full policy brief here.