Fiji calls for urgent action on climate financing at ADB meeting

There is an urgency to build climate-resilient infrastructure and adaptation strategies and if you don’t do it now, the cost of doing it later would be too much and could become prohibitive for many of the Pacific island countries, including Fiji.

This has been highlighted by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Professor Biman Prasad while speaking during an event on the sidelines of the 57th Annual Meeting of the ADB Board of Governors in Georgia.

While speaking during a panel discussion on “Mobilizing Climate Financing and Ensuring Financial Stability”, Professor Prasad says we cannot delay the urgency with which Pacific island countries need climate finance because there is an existential threat already in the Pacific.

He says no country outside of the Pacific has to worry about wholesale relocation and legal imperatives to see where these people are going to be if they have to be moved out of their own countries.

Professor Prasad says the instruments of climate financing that are available through monetary institutions or other regulatory mechanisms, are a drop in the ocean.

He says the Asian Development Bank needs to take a different approach apart from concessional or normal lending based on market interest rates and they need to explore other instruments which means grants.

Professor Prasad says even if these instruments are tailored and there is a window to say that this is what Pacific island countries or small island states should use to access financing, it is not enough.

The Deputy Prime Minister says the mechanism to access those funds is too onerous for many of the small Pacific island countries.

He says many of them do not have any fiscal space left to borrow even concessional finance from multilateral banks.

Professor Prasad further says no country outside the Blue Pacific would be experiencing a loss of GDP between 30 to 100 percent as a result of the impact of climate change such as extreme weather patterns, drought, and flood.

He says many of the Pacific island countries, even with good concessional financing, do not have the fiscal space to borrow anymore and address the adaptation issues in the Pacific.