5Cs and UK Signs 2.7 Million Pounds MOU

David Rutley

One of the actions coming out of Minister Rutley’s visit to Belize is the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the United Kingdom and the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center. At COP 26, the UK announced forty million pounds in funding for the Small Island Developing State Capacity and Resilience program.  The signing of the MOU between the UK and Five Cs is delivering on that promise. UK’s government is making available close to three million pounds to support Small Island Developing States in developing skill sets that can take advantage of available climate financing.

David Rutley,  Member of Parliament, United Kingdom

“We’ve been talking over the last year a lot about what we can do to help Belize and the Caribbean more widely on tackling climate change. And, there is some amazing work that’s going on. But one of the key asks across the Caribbean, and certainly from me speaking with the foreign minister, is about access to climate finance. And the new memorandum of understanding that we’ve signed today with the CCCCC, part of CARICOM’s infrastructure, will make it easier for us to provide support in enabling countries, Belize and others across the Caribbean, to access funding and to build capacity so that going forward, the countries are able to do that, more effectively. There’s a real art to filling out these forms and bidding requests, and we want to make sure that the Caribbean is well placed, Belize particularly, to enable them to get access, to enable you to get access to that financing. I’m particularly optimistic about the Biodiversity Landscape Fund that we’re supporting with Belize and three other Central American countries that helps with the green conservation. But obviously there’s fantastic work going on with the Oceans Country Partnership Program in blue conservation as well, marine conservation. So this, what we just signed today is important, but it’s just one element of a much wider program of activity that we’re doing together to unlock finance, but also expertise to tackle climate change.”