PRIME Minister Philip ‘Brave’ Davis in Dubai for COP28. Photo: OPM
By EARYEL BOWLEG
Tribune Staff Reporter
ebowleg@tribunemedia.net
DELEGATES at COP28 agreed to introduce a loss and damage fund for small island developing states and other vulnerable territories such as The Bahamas to recover from storms, floods, and other adverse weather events influenced by climate change.
“We trust that this promise will turn into reality as the days go on with our negotiations and discussions with world leaders who are here with us,” Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis said yesterday in a video message from Dubai, where COP28 is being held.
“The key here is to ensure that the industrialized world recognize their responsibility to small island developing states like ours, recognise that they have to have a moral obligation, and we’re trying to convert that moral obligation qualification into a legal and enforceable obligation to provide funding for loss and damage as a result of hurricanes and other devastating events related to climate change, and that’s where we are heading.”
Mr Davis also spoke at the launch of The Bahamas Sustainable Investment Programme, an initiative, he said, that will help the country “survive an era of super-charged storms by creating super-charged, win-win investment partnerships.”
“Along with our strategic advisors, Resilience Capital Ventures, we will work with regional and global capital market leaders to underwrite and put in place an innovative financing facility,” he said.
“We aim to secure a facility of 500m US dollars in the first instance. Our priorities for this fund include spending to make our infrastructure more climate-resilient, our transition to clean energy, conservation of our coastal zones, reduction in biodiversity loss, regenerative agriculture, carbon sequestration, and participation in natural asset-backed carbon credit programmes. Blended finance is a smart way to close the climate financing gap at a time when solutions cannot be postponed.”
Minister Jerome Fitzgerald, Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of the Prime Minister, said the programme was carefully designed by Resilience Capital Ventures (RCV) in collaboration with policy teams.
Comments
Sickened 5 months ago
Hopefully politicians have no access to the fund once it is established. Otherwise you might as well consider the fund as a personal bank account.
One 5 months ago
The most likely 90% will go to politicians family and friends and 10% to the public so they appear legitimate.
realfreethinker 5 months ago
Good luck with this LOL
concernedcitizen 5 months ago
Where are we going to get 500 million US , and if anybody loans us it ,they will put their friends and family in charge of it with gigantic salaries and it will just be more money that vanishes and the public will be taxed to pay the interest on .
concernedcitizen 5 months ago
Notice there is only one Saudi in the pic and about 5 smiling and laughing Bahamians travelling on borrowed money that we the public will be taxed to pay the interest on .They never pay down the principal of the Bahamian debt they just keep paying higher and higher interest rates to the lenders .
ted4bz 5 months ago
They need to stop all this US anti-human global childish charades and let's get back to some form of civilized normality.
Porcupine 5 months ago
"Our priorities for this fund include spending to make our infrastructure more climate-resilient, our transition to clean energy, conservation of our coastal zones, reduction in biodiversity loss, regenerative agriculture, carbon sequestration, and participation in natural asset-backed carbon credit programmes. Blended finance is a smart way to close the climate financing gap at a time when solutions cannot be postponed.” Interesting that 4 out of the 6 initiatives could have already been adopted by The Bahamas. What will super charge our leaders to all of a sudden embark on programs that have been available before? Oh. I see, 500,000,000 dollars. Something fishy here? And just what are; natural asset-backed carbon credit programmes? Does anyone know?
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