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Climate Change Climate Change

Will their voices be heard? Surrounded by water, these children in the Solomon Islands wade their way towards an uncertain future.

years from start to project implementation. available in Pacific Island countries.
“With climate change, the need [for finance] is now. If it’s A UN report titled, ‘Accessing Climate Finance: Challenges
delayed, it multiplies, the impacts are compounded and so and Opportunities for Small Island Developing States’ sums
the magnitude increases and the need is even more dire. it up: “SIDS public sectors inherently face major human
If you talk about coastal protection, like sea level rise and and technical capacity constraints throughout the project
coastal erosion, as a community, you notice that the coastal cycle, from project origination to implementation. The
areas are starting to erode, so let’s get climate finance complexity of the climate finance landscape and the lack of
help us address this. In 10 years, not only has your coastal harmonisation among the requirements of multilateral climate
zone totally eroded, but you may have also lost an adjacent funds and donors further exacerbate this challenge.”
mangrove ecosystem, you’ve lost land, you’ve lost the use of
a whole ecosystem.” Climate or development funding
Having to prove that the project proposal is directly related At the macro level, the Pacific is now pushing for a change
to climate change, is a big requirement. in the climate finance conversation. Pacific countries want
Says Moresi: “From [the climate fund] perspective, they climate finance to be recognised as development finance.
want to make sure that the allocation of resources [funds] Dealing with the increasing impacts of climate change upon
and the implementation addresses the climate issue. Climate public infrastructure, for example, becomes a development
change is so cross-cutting and broad that you should also need.
consider social impacts like health and education, gender, It is yet another point of battle between small island states
etc. But it needs to be more than just a casual link. It needs and the climate finance agencies.
to be a substantial, evidence-based link to justify how the “If we do development in a way that’s cognisant of the
project is going to address those cross-cutting issues.” realities of climate threat, then the definition of climate
It doesn’t stop there. The level of data-specific project funding isn’t fixed,” says Samuwai. “The GCF will always say
validation is onerous. ‘no, this is not a climate cost. This is a development cost.
“They want evidence—compelling scientific evidence. For You’re building a bridge? It’s not climate related.’
example, [they will say] ‘show us the baseline - that the sea “And we’re projecting that the water level will increase to
level, the coastline was there and because of climate change this level, or we need to strengthen all the houses, because
impacts, these are the new water markers’,” says Samuwai. the intensity [of cyclones] will increase. Now, the climate
Quite often, that’s the kind of data that is not easily needs really are development needs because that is the new

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