Climate finance: Strengthening capacity in the Pacific The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat Introduction: Commitments since Copenhagen Pacific Island Forum leaders have continuously reaffirmed that climate change remains the greatest threat of our time – to the livelihoods, security and well-being of the peoples of the Pacific. They also stressed the critical and urgent need for access to international finance in order to effectively respond both with urgent and sustained adaptation finance and mitigation finance, in particular where there are co-benefits for sustainable development. Pacific peoples are already suffering the consequences of climate change, the effects of which are compounding and will no doubt reverse development gains to date, while the lowest lying atolls challenge their very viability. The announcement of the Copenhagen Accord at the 15th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 15), in 2009, sparked a high level of interest and expectation in developing countries, particularly those who, up until now, had received little by way of real finance for adaptation. The pledged US$30 billion ‘new and additional’ in fast start finance and the mobilisation of up to $100 billion per annum by 2020, with conditions for equal distribution between adaptation and mitigation in some small way helped to compensate for the lack of ambition and consensus to a legally binding agreement – as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. In line with these promises in Copenhagen, forum leaders and ministers have called for increased access to and management of climate change financing to meet the critical climate change challenge in the Pacific region. They tasked the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) in collaboration with others, to pursue this request with some urgency. Commonwealth Finance Ministers at the IMF, Washington DC (October 2013). Left: the Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis, Dr Denzil Douglas; second left: Nigeria's Finance Minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala Commonwealth Governance 108 Handbook 2013/14 Commonwealth Secretariat
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