Pacific: Barriers to Access Climate Change Finance

Pacific Joins Asia and Latin America to Address Barriers to Access Climate Change Finance

[3 May 2013 – [Fiji & Pacific Islands] Community members and specialists in the Pacific are invited to join Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean to share ideas on overcoming challenges being faced by countries keen to utilise global climate change finance. 

International climate change finance for developing countries is often left untapped due to a lack of expertise to prepare sophisticated technical proposals donors often require. It is hoped this exchange across the three regions, moderated by the Pacific Solution Exchange (PSE) knowledge-sharing forum, will assist practitioners and governments officials to better understand and overcome such challenges. 

A spokesperson from Latin America and the Caribbean, Nils-Sjard Schulz from MultiPolar, a network supporting Latin American governments working on climate change finance, said the tri-regional e-conversation will contribute to the objectives and content of two upcoming climate finance events - one in the Pacific and the other in Central America.

“Latin American and Caribbean countries are very keen to learn from Pacific innovations and experiences,” Mr Schulz said, who is based in San Salvador and Washington DC.

“As part of this process, governments are conducting studies on domestic and international barriers to access, manage and account for large-scale climate finance.”

“In addition, our event will enable the exchange of governments’ solutions to enhance access to and management of climate change resources; and in particular lessons learned to develop institutional and operational capacities of ministries and sector institutions to be ready for climate change finance,” he said.

The two events that will benefit from the ‘Challenges of Climate Change Finance’ e-discussion are:

1)    Pacific Climate Change Resourcing Event Week, comprising two separate but related events. These combined meetings seek to bring together the necessary Pacific stakeholders whose work involves climate change financing to assess progress to date and consider how countries and their partners may wish to progress these efforts. The meetings will also support Pacific Island Countries (PICs) in effectively responding to climate change in a comprehensive manner and provide consolidated guidance and views to feed into relevant meetings during the year as necessary.

Pacific Climate Change Financing Workshop - co-hosted by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) and Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) on behalf of the Pacific Climate Change Roundtable Resources Working Group, Nadi – Fiji, 30 May to 1 June 2013 (

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