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A five-day conference in the Belgian capital this week, Brussels, focused on identifying new funding pathways and opportunities for resilience-building projects in European Union and British Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs).
The Climate Finance Forum (CFF) was organized by the Green Overseas (GO) Programme, funded by the European Union under the 11th European Development Fund (EDF) and implemented by Expertise France since 2020.
OCTs are at the forefront of climate impacts, but their links to governing authorities in Europe and the UK mean they are unable to tap into international climate finance programmes tailored for adaptation and mitigation projects. OCTs must therefore rely on funding from the EU and UK to develop adequate resilience-building plans. As part of this, the CFF in Brussels is seeking to unlock access to funding opportunities and mechanisms beyond the EU and the UK, by bringing together over 130 stakeholders to catalyze the next steps in developing workable sustainable solutions for OCTs.
Ahead of the event, Ahab Downer, GO Programme Director expressed: “With the current and projected impacts of climate change, it’s critical that OCTs gain access to sufficient funding to underwrite the requisite resilience building initiatives. The GO Climate Finance Forum offers a unique opportunity for representatives from across the OCTs to liaise, exchange, and brainstorm with each other, as well as with a wealth of climate finance experts and providers of finance. The structured dialog afforded by the Climate Finance Forum will allow participants to formulate together practical and actionable plans to close the funding gap, and more effectively address the intensifying challenges of climate change for their increasingly vulnerable countries and territories.”
During the event, high-level representatives from the EU, the UK and their OCTs engaged in debates, workshops, and discussions alongside experts from civil society on the best way forward to close the funding gap and safeguard these communities at the frontlines of the climate crisis.
Jeremie Katidjo Monnier, Minister of the Environment, Government of New Caledonia, spoke during his opening speech saying: “Our overseas countries and territories are at the forefront of the fight against global warming and we also feel its effects very concretely in New Caledonia. The temperature is increasing faster than the global average over the last fifty years, the reduction in rainfall is having a serious impact on our agriculture and our forests – a fire ravaged more than a thousand hectares of our forests just last week. The rise in sea levels is tangible and more than 70% of our Caledonian coastline is subject to coastal erosion. Climate change threatens our tribes, our villages, our agriculture, our capital, our identity, and it is our duty to organize collectively to face it.”
“The 25 European and UK Overseas Countries and Territories represented at this Forum could not be more geographically dispersed or more diverse in terms of our histories and our cultures, but we are absolutely united in a situation in which we find ourselves. We are all on the frontlines of climate change, […] you could argue that as overseas countries and territories, we have the most at stake and the biggest role to play,” Dr. Tasha Ebanks-Garcia, Cayman Islands Government Representative to the UK expressed, “We are all aware of the scale of the task ahead, but with global leadership and very active involvement from all countries and territories, not least the 25 represented here, we believe we have the ingenuity and the resources to tackle the climate crisis. Indeed all of us here at this forum bring a crucial perspective and have a vital role to play.”
“The ice sheets and the image of the polar bear have become a synonym for the climate crisis, a symbol for the urgent need for international solutions. But the story of the ice sheet, like that of the polar bear, overshadows a more important story, a missing story, a story that remains untold, surviving in this surrounding melting white mess is 57,000 people who experience the far-reaching consequences of the climate crisis every single day. The rapidly melting ice sheet and everything around it, is what we once called in Greenland our home,” added Kalistat Lund, Minister of Agriculture, Self-sufficiency, Energy and Environment, Government of Greenland, “We, who are gathered here today, share a common story. We share a fate that we did not choose. A common history that we have no part in writing, but has been written by others. It is also history that now places us between two chairs when it comes to discussions on international climate finance. It is in fact history alone that defines our opportunities […] We must therefore insist that we be compensated for the consequences of climate change for the benefit of our people. At the very least we must continue to assert that we did not cause this current predicament and we did not decide the current financial structures.”
The GO CFF highlights the shared ambition of the EU and UK in closing funding gaps for OCTs and developing workable solutions for resilience-building efforts. On the international stage, climate finance has been a divisive issue at successive United Nations climate negotiations (UNFCCC COPs), and is set to be at the top of the agenda again at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.