Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub Assisting Belize with Capacity Building
For some time now, the Government of Belize has been the beneficiary of a climate finance advisor, in the person of Ranga Pallawala. Pallawala took up office in Belize through support from the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub that seeks to provide Commonwealth member countries with in-country expertise. Now the support is not permanent and so the program also assists in building the capacity of the people in country to design projects that will meet the requirements to access climate financing. During a side event at COP27, the success of the access hub was discussed.
Oldman Koboto, Manager/Advisor, Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub
“We will then deploy the commonwealth national climate finance advisors in country, embedded in the ministries to provide technical assistance in project development where they actually focus on designing the project themselves, bankable projects that are compliant with the requirements of the international climate fund mechanisms so that they improve the bankability for them to be approved by those financial institutions. In that support, we do make sure that we develop investment ready projects for the countries through our national climate finance advisors. Coupled to that, we also do capacity building – human and institutional capacity building – where we support the government to be able to set up the structures that are required for climate finance investment through whatever the structures that are needed to set up the mechanisms – whether it is the committees or the institutions – that are needed to be able to facilitate that investment. But pursuant to that also we appreciate that there is a human element to it where we need to strongly build capacity for the people in country to be able to design this.”
Dr. Lennox Gladden, Chief Climate Change Officer
“We have benefited in numerous ways, mostly from the capacity building component at this point. We know some of the core issues as it relates to getting access to bankable projects. We always talk that a lot of funding to combat the impacts of climate change is out there, but it is just accessing it. How we have benefited from it so far? Initially, we looked at a debt for nature swab; we did some theoretical work on that, but the more pertinent one is the capacity building exercise that the Commonwealth, through our national climate finance advisor, has provided. It is important for participants in a write shop to get a better understand that it is not just looking at the writing aspect, but what is climate change and what it means for their respective sector. And then having that level of awareness, they can then translate that to what we all know as a bankable or scalable project for actual implementation on the ground.”