AG: Countries most affected by climate change struggle to qualify for funding

Attorney General Ryan Pinder.

By Fay Simmons

Tribune business reporter

[email protected]

Small island states, which are most vulnerable to natural disasters as a result of climate change, are often unable to apply for climate finance due to the many hurdles they have to overcome, US Attorney General Ryan Pinder said yesterday.

Speaking at Climate Week in New York yesterday, Pinder proposed using a vulnerability index to determine which countries should be granted access to finance.

“The excessive conditionality is an important aspect when you think about climate finance, especially concessional climate finance. A small country like the Bahamas has to overcome enormous hurdles to even try to access it,” Pinder said.

“But we think some of the changes that need to be made are that the Bahamas is considered a high GDP per capita country. That means we fall outside of a lot of the concession frameworks… So we automatically don’t qualify for a lot of things.

“We want a vulnerability index to be used when it comes to concessional financing. Which countries are the most vulnerable? What does vulnerability mean? And these countries should have first priority for concessional financing?”

He said it was “frustrating” that small island states had to borrow money at high interest rates from the highest-emitting countries to rebuild after natural disasters.

“It’s very frustrating that we have a climate crisis affecting the Bahamas and other small island developing states,” Mr Pinder said. “We have hurricanes that come through year after year and cause massive damage on one island after another, and then we have to go out and borrow at high interest rates just to rebuild. And it’s a perpetual cycle, and we’re borrowing money from the same countries that created the climate crisis that we’re borrowing money from to rebuild. So it’s a crazy cycle. It’s circular and it really puts countries like the Bahamas in a situation where there’s a perpetual end, and at some point your debt burden gets so big that you can’t develop your country, and you can’t develop your population, and then everything explodes. And guess who steps in, the IMF… funny, funny.”

He said the Bahamas had asked the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion to hold major emitters liable, and a positive ruling would lay the groundwork for providing climate finance and sovereign debt relief to vulnerable countries.

“We believe that as a jurisdiction you have to be forceful, particularly as a jurisdiction that is the most vulnerable,” Mr Pinder said.

“We are very active at the International Court of Justice in requesting an advisory opinion. This advisory opinion will address whether states themselves can be held liable for neglecting climate regulation and greenhouse gas regulation and effectively perpetuating the climate crisis. We believe this will be a landmark case before the International Court of Justice.

“We believe that if we win this case and get an opinion that states themselves are liable for their failure to act on the climate crisis, that puts us in a legal position and a position where we can hold those who are doing the most polluting liable. And that in turn, I think, leads to climate finance. That leads not only to low-interest loans, but perhaps to sovereign loan forgiveness, which will allow small countries like the Bahamas to lose some of their debt burden, so that we can actually develop something for our people.”

He called for a two percent tax to be levied on private companies such as fossil fuel producers to finance climate protection.

These funds will be fed into a pool that can be accessed by countries recovering from a climate change-related disaster to ensure they can rebuild and implement adaptation and mitigation measures.

“We believe there should be a two percent tax on the net income of fossil fuel and oil producers and along the entire value chain,” Pinder said.

“We think the two percent tax should be a global tax that goes into a fund that helps finance the vulnerabilities caused by the climate crisis, and we are happy that we managed to include the environment in the tax agreement. And these are the things that we will be fighting for, because actually it should not just be the countries that are liable, which we talked about in the ICJ matter.

“We think that private companies that have ignored what they are doing to the world for decades and generations despite hard evidence should now pay up, and pay up to those who are most vulnerable. So if we can set up a mechanism that is not low-interest loans, but a real fund available to the vulnerable, I think that creates some simplification. Then you just have to prove that you are really using the money for appropriate adaptation and mitigation measures.”