Pepukaye Bardouille is the Director of the Bridgetown Initiative and Special Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office of Barbados. Kerrie Symmonds is Barbados’ Minister of Energy and Business and Senior Minister coordinating Productive Sectors.
When conflict erupts in one region, consequences can reverberate across the globe. Beyond the tragic human toll, the economic impact is palpable. In 2022, the war in Ukraine illustrated this clearly: fractured supply chains and soaring oil prices sent fuel import bills skyrocketing. And again, today, as oil prices spike amidst conflict in the Middle East, the stakes could not be higher, in particular for Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
For SIDS, resilience and energy have always been inseparable. When a hurricane hits, power lines fall. When shipments stall, oil dependence becomes a liability. Yet these countries also hold a strategic advantage in the form of abundant wind, sun, waves, and in many cases geothermal resources.
Harnessed effectively, these can power entire economies cost-effectively. With this in mind, SIDS have set some of the world’s most ambitious climate targets, with several pledging 100% renewable electricity within the next decade or two. And they have made progress: installed renewable capacity across SIDS tripled from 3.3 GW in 2014 to 9.4 GW in 2024.
But execution and financing still lag well behind ambition – and in the midst of an oil shock, closing that gap isn’t a policy preference for SIDS. It’s a matter of survival.
Lessons from Barbados
Barbados offers an example of what a credible pathway looks like. Its 50MW Lamberts and Castle project will be the country’s first utility-scale onshore wind farm and one of the largest in the Caribbean – building on a renewables base that already supplies 16% of power capacity.
Developed as a public-private partnership, it evolved from a 10MW concept into a utility-scale investment. That journey holds several lessons for other SIDS looking to accelerate their energy transition.
First, be honest about what is politically palatable and ensure the population shares in the upside. Many SIDS operate state utilities that view private power producers as threats to sovereignty or revenue. But private actors often bring the capital and expertise that large-scale projects require.
The answer is smart design. Barbados models this well, pairing private generation ownership with structures that ensure national benefit, including opportunities for citizens to invest directly.
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Second, ensure that the financials really work. Small islands face high per-megawatt costs, which logistics compound: transporting and installing large wind turbines can require port reinforcements, specialist cranes, and road widening.
These numbers rarely appear in headline budgets but can quietly kill a deal. Financing packages must therefore cover not just generation, but storage, grid upgrades, and the full logistics chain. These are too often treated as afterthoughts when they are, in practice, the difference between a project that gets built and one that doesn’t.
Collaboration required
Third, development partners must streamline energy transition support without compromising sustainability. Environmental and social studies, bird and bat surveys, community consultations, and grid analyses all take time, and rightly so. But their multiyear development timelines before a tender is issued are incompatible with 2030 or even 2035 energy targets.
SIDS need simplified processes with upfront permitting clarity, clearer regulatory pathways, and predefined safeguards. Development partners must move from project-by-project structuring to practical, time-sensitive and replicable models that reduce procedural drag while upholding environmental rigor.
Fourth, recognize that land access is critical to national energy security. In land-constrained countries, which most SIDS are, a handful of parcels can determine whether critical capacity is built. In Barbados, we expanded the Lamberts and Castle wind project site from 30MW to 50MW through careful planning and negotiation. These decisions can make or break a project’s financials, so landowners must be partners in the process, not obstacles to it.
Finally, mandate ‘all of government’ teams with the stamina to deliver. The Lamberts and Castle project advanced because the Ministry of Energy and Business, Barbados National Energy Company, Barbados Light and Power, community stakeholders and International Finance Corporation – the government’s transaction adviser – worked as a unified team.
Cheaper electricity and greater security
Energy transition projects need cross-agency partners empowered to make timely decisions, and a shared mission – all cemented by the ability to remove bottlenecks at the highest level. Institutional collaboration is not a nice-to-have, it is the engine of delivery.
Resilience cannot be outsourced, nor achieved through pledges alone. It must be built: panel by panel, battery by battery, turbine by turbine, grid by grid.
Building on the progress at Lamberts and Castle, Barbados is exploring the possibility of tripling its wind energy capacity through a public–private partnership model. Importantly, this expansion will not compromise food security. Wind turbines typically occupy less than 5% of the land area, allowing the remaining space to continue supporting agricultural production, another key resilience priority for Barbados.
In Barbados, new turbines will soon turn in the same trade winds that once powered sugar windmills, this time delivering cheaper electricity, greater economic security, and the ability to meet climate goals on our own terms. By putting renewables at the heart of resilience, SIDS can secure energy independence and lead the world in climate and economic security.
The post How small island states can make renewables the bedrock of resilience appeared first on Climate Home News.
How small island states can make renewables the bedrock of resilience
Climate Change
Large flotilla brings Pacific voices and message to leaders at Pre-COP meeting: Keep 1.5C Alive
NADI, FIJI Wednesday 7 October 2026 — Around 80 people including Pacific and Torres Strait community members, Elders and youth activists travelled as part of a colourful flotilla past the Pre-COP venues with a message for leaders: ‘Keep 1.5°C Alive’.
High res footage and images available here
The large flotilla included traditional Fijian voyaging vessel the Uto Ni Yalo, six 6-person outrigger canoes, and Greenpeace campaigning vessel the Oceania which sailed from Sydney to the Pre-COP in Nadi. On board were Elders, climate-vulnerable communities members from across the Pacific and Torres Strait, youth activists and poets, and campaigners and climate experts from across the region.
Messaging on canoes and banners said ‘Hold the Line at 1.5°C’ and ‘Keep 1.5°C Alive’ — a reminder to leaders that the climate limit established under the Paris Agreement is a non-negotiable survival line.
Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “People from across the Pacific and Australia have come together today to make sure the voices of our communities are heard by leaders meeting here in Nadi for the Pre-COP climate talks. The Taku Pakasoa Declaration adopted here at Pre-COP means ‘Strength in Unity’, and that’s how we’re coming together today.
“Our message is clear: Hold the Line on 1.5°C and centre those most impacted by the climate crisis in your decision-making. Our children’s futures must not be stolen away so that polluting nations can continue down the fossil-fuel path.
“Limiting global heating to 1.5°C is a non-negotiable survival line for Pacific communities and for humanity. Every cyclone, every storm now blows with the deadly force of accumulated emissions and gives a warning of what is to come as we face a dangerous summer of climate-fuelled extreme weather. Do not ignore our voices.”
On board, Aigagalefili Fepulea’i-Tapua’i, Pacific youth climate advocate and poet from Aotearoa Climate Action Network, said: “To hold the line on 1.5C for our Pacific family, New Zealand, as the only country where the connection between environmental protection and indigenous rights is legally validated by our constitutional document, must protect the rights of Māori.”
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Media contact: Kate O’Callaghan in Nadi on +61 406 231 892 (Whatsapp/Signal)
Large flotilla brings Pacific voices and message to leaders at Pre-COP meeting: Keep 1.5C Alive
Climate Change
A ‘victory’ for communities as High Court rules climate impacts from coal and gas must be considered even where fossil fuels are exported
SYDNEY, Wednesday 7 October 2026 — In response to the landmark High Court ruling that climate impacts of fossil fuel projects must be considered by NSW planning authorities, the following lines can be attributed to Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific
“The High Court decision today is a victory for communities that bear the brunt of the storms, bushfires and extreme weather fuelled by Australian fossil fuel corporations.
“Coal and gas companies have claimed they are not responsible for their pollution because it happens overseas, but today Australia’s highest court sided with common sense and scientific evidence to find that every new coal and gas approval in this country could put us at risk, no matter where it is sold or burnt.
“As leaders meet at the Pre-COP talks in Fiji this week, Pacific communities are reaffirming the importance of the 1.5C temperature limit as a survival line for humanity, and is a scientific, moral and legal obligation as affirmed by the landmark Pacific-led ICJ Advisory Opinion. The highest court in the world, and now in Australia, have been clear: it is legally imperative that all of the pollution from fossil fuel projects be considered before approving a new project.
“Now is the moment for the Australian Government, as COP31 President of Negotiations, to find the courage, leadership and grit our country is known for to chart a new course away from fossil fuels. This begins with showing leadership at home by ending new coal and gas approvals.”
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After witnessing the effects of sea-level rise in the low-lying island nation of Tuvalu, Pacific leaders on Tuesday used the pre-COP31 summit in Fiji to voice their frustration at the difficulties they have experienced in tapping the global climate finance system.
A small group of government leaders, climate negotiators and heads of development banks and climate funds took a trip to Tuvalu’s Funafuti atoll on Tuesday morning, travelling by road over land just 10-20 metres wide to visit a project that is building barriers to keep the sea from the land.
They then flew to Fiji for the pre-COP summit, where several Pacific leaders said they had been let down by the insufficient quantity, bad terms and slow speed of international finance to help them adapt to a warming climate that is bringing higher oceans, drought and more powerful storms to their shores.
“Right now, our islands are like a canoe that has been rammed by a massive foreign ship. Our canoe is taking on water, we are sinking, and what is the world’s response?” asked Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr.
“They hand us a tiny patch to cover a gaping hole,” he continued, “but the bureaucratic process just to receive that patch is so slow that the water fills the hole while we wait. Then to rebuild the vessel so that we can survive the next storm, we are offered loans, debt that adds weight to a sinking boat packaged in red tape so thick we can barely access it. And while we wait, the water continues to fill.”
Pacific leaders and Australia called again on governments to invest in the new Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), which has been designed by the Pacific Islands Forum and is seeking $500 million in investments by COP31 in November.
It has around $180 million so far, but did not receive additional pledges during the UN General Assembly in New York. The PRF aims to invest to generate annual returns which it can give to projects like water tanks for drought-hit communities.
Witnessing sea level rise
The annual pre-COP gathering is usually a low-profile technical meeting of climate negotiators. But this year, Australia – which is the president of negotiations at COP31 – partnered with the Pacific to introduce a “leaders segment” in an attempt to shine a spotlight on climate issues affecting the region.
Fourteen government leaders – from Australia, Timor-Leste, Mauritius and the Pacific – made the trip. They were joined by the European Union’s climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, the heads of the Green Climate Fund and the Asian Development Bank and former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard.
On their return to Fiji, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale told the pre-COP leaders roundtable that the sea level rise they had witnessed was personal for him.
“Tuvalu was not just a site visit for me. I saw the story of my own saltwater people,” he said, adding that he, his daughter and his grandfather had lost their houses to sea level rise and that three-quarters of his electorate live on land that will be underwater in the next 30 years.
From the other side of the world, Antigua and Barbuda’s environment minister Michael Joseph said Tuvalu’s problems felt similar to those of his own Caribbean islands. “I saw vulnerable communities… just metres from the sea and people determined to remain on their land, preserve their culture and way of life,” he said.
A group of Fijian schoolchildren told the leaders it was not just sea level rise the Pacific struggles with but also heatwaves, droughts and storms, which worry their families and prevent them from learning.
Climate finance red-tape
Several Pacific leaders criticised the world’s leaders for not doing enough to combat climate change. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown expressed disappointment that only two non-Pacific leaders had come to the pre-COP, a fact Australian media widely picked up on to label the event a flop and question its A$20 million (US$14m) price tag.
“We’ve heard a lot of numbers these last two days,” Brown said. “Let me share one of my own. More than 50 invitations extended to world leaders… to see for themselves what high emissions are doing to our nations and our ocean – an ocean that covers nearly one-third of the Earth’s surface.”
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He called for more climate finance for the Pacific, asking “if the world is prepared to assess our suitability for climate finance, why is it not equally prepared to scrutinise whether those responsible for delivering it are meeting their obligations?”
Like Palau’s president Whipps, Naoero’s President David Adeang criticised the red tape that is hindering access to climate finance as well as a lack of money, complaining especially about “complicated procedures, heavy reporting, delays in approval and disbursement”.
Adeang added that “the way we assess vulnerability matters”, adding that it should be measured by more than income. Naoero, for example, is classified by the World Bank as high-income, restricting which climate finance it is eligible for.
Action plan to improve access
On Thursday, the Australian government will present a statement and action plan on improving access to climate finance for small island developing states and least developed countries, which it is asking other countries and organisations to endorse.
The statement addresses some of these Pacific complaints as well as acknowledging that progress has already been made on simplifying access by multilateral development banks and climate funds.
In Fiji, Asian Development Bank head Masato Kanda said his institution is “tailoring our finance and operations to island realities” because “your children and their children should be able to grow old in the countries their ancestors have called home for millennia”.
The executive director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Mafalda Duarte, said that the GCF-backed coastal adaptation project leaders visited in Tuvalu shows that “climate finance works” although – as the project took eight years to implement – “it takes time, and therefore we have no time to waste”.
Australia calls for optimism
While Pacific leaders expressed concern that the world is set to blast past its agreed 1.5C warming limit, endangering their nations, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called for “optimism”. “If people think there is no hope, then they will not strive to get the change that we need,” he said.
He said that when he attended his first COP in 2005, Australia’s renewable energy target was 2%. Its target is now 82% renewable electricity by 2030.
While Albanese promoted Australia’s success at electrifying homes and businesses and rolling out renewables, he has been criticised by climate campaigners for extending the production of fossil fuels, including coal – largely for export.
France’s Minister for Ecological Transition Monique Barbut defended the European Union’s climate action at the pre-COP meeting. She said the continent was heating up and reducing emissions faster and providing more climate finance than anywhere else in the world.
“It is time for all major emitters to step up and do their fair share” on climate finance, she said. Most developing countries with large emissions have fiercely resisted joining the club of climate finance donors, arguing they have played a disproportionately small historic role in causing climate change.
Barbut, as well as Palau’s president Whipps, called for the next flagship scientific assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be finished by COP33 in 2028, in time to inform the next global stocktake of national climate action.
This timeline has been opposed by countries like India, Saudi Arabia and China, who argue it would put an unfair burden on developing countries. Barbut said countries should “support the work of the IPCC rather than sabotage its calendar”.
Barbut said that governments should agree at COP31 to aim to raise the share of “clean electricity” in final energy consumption to 35% by 2035. The Turkish and Australian governments have pushed for this goal although without specifying that the electricity should be “clean”. Barbut added that COP31 should also agree to cut emissions of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.
The post Pacific leaders rail at climate finance failures after pre-COP trip to Tuvalu appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pacific leaders rail at climate finance failures after pre-COP trip to Tuvalu
