GCF upgrades climate support for vulnerable Pacific nations

The Green Climate Fund is improving its understanding of Pacific island needs to fortify their frontline place in the climate crisis by strengthening its ties with the Pacific Community (SPC).

GCF today signed an Accreditation Master Agreement (AMA) with this Pacific-based regional body to provide the legal framework for funding climate projects.

GCF Deputy Executive Director Javier Manzanares said GCF is paying particular attention to supporting the resilience of Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to match their extreme vulnerability to climate impacts.

“Warming oceans, sea-level rise and more intense weather events like cyclones are already impacting the everyday lives of Pacific Island people,” said Mr Manzanares. “GCF is ready and willing to increase its support for Pacific SIDS. Without major investments to improve their adaptation to climate change now, some of these island nations could become uninhabitable,” Mr Manzanares added, citing a recent International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report focusing on the world’s oceans.

SPC Deputy Director-General Cameron Diver said: “Thanks to this agreement, we will be able to channel more climate funding and more partnerships towards the Pacific, to ensure that sustained funding and attention is brought to the region, particularly to Pacific Island countries (PICs), which face in climate change their most existential threat.”

“It is a unique opportunity for the Green Climate Fund and SPC to work together, to respond to the needs that are expressed by PICs, and to equip them with the right tools to take action at national, regional and global levels.”

Climate change is a major focus of SPC, initially founded in 1947 as the South Pacific Commission, as many of its 26 members are Pacific SIDS. The vulnerability of SIDS to climate effects - exasperated by their small size, remoteness and exposure to external economic shocks – has attracted increasing global concern.

Visiting SPC member Tuvalu in September this year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said sea level rises in some Pacific states four times greater than the global average posed “an existential threat to several island States”.  

While aiming to provide equal financing to reducing emissions and assisting efforts to adapt to climate change, GCF gives special consideration to supporting the most vulnerable nations. Learn more about GCF’s support for SIDS throughout the world.