Avinash Persaud is special advisor to the president of the Inter-American Development Bank on climate change and an architect of the 2022 Bridgetown Initiative. Emily Wilkinson is director of the Resilient and Sustainable Islands Initiative (RESI) at ODI Global.
Many communities are vulnerable to climate shocks – from the urban poor in Brazil to smallholder farmers in Africa’s Sahel region. But few are more vulnerable than those living in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) around the world, from the Caribbean to the South Pacific.
Storms and rising sea levels present an existential risk. They can wipe out annual incomes several times over. We don’t yet know the full extent of the damage wrought on Jamaica by Hurricane Melissa – the strongest hurricane to hit the island since records began – but they are expected to run into tens of billions of dollars, and recovery will take at least a decade.
These nations are the “canaries in the coal mine”, signalling the dangers that lie ahead. In 2022, the world set out a plan to tackle the threat. Economists, nonprofits and nation states got behind the Bridgetown Initiative, spearheaded by Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley.
It has historically been difficult and expensive to finance the projects many nations need to cope with our changing climate. Yet much progress has been made on the Bridgetown Initiative’s five-step plan to reform the global financial system.
We have seen wider adoption of pause clauses in debt arrangements aimed at taking the pressure off countries when they face disasters. These clauses were used for the first time by Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl in 2024. In 2023, countries agreed to unlock $100 billion in Special Drawing Rights, an international reserve of assets held by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), scaling up states’ efforts to build resilience to climate change.
More recently, progress has been made to reduce the cost of capital and currency volatility, two other major brakes on resilience investments. Brazil, the COP30 host nation, has just launched the Eco Invest programme with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which will mobilise significant new private and public finance to restore degraded rural areas, produce clean energy and create green jobs.
Closing the yawning climate finance gap
These measures have helped to close a yawning climate finance gap, but more action is needed.
Global average temperatures continue to rise, and we are close to biophysical tipping points with disastrous consequences. For many climate-vulnerable countries, investing in resilience is the best response. Climate adaptation technologies have improved substantially and countries can now build heat-ready homes and schools, while coastal defences can withstand Category 5 hurricanes like Melissa. Every dollar spent on adaptation saves up to $10 on avoided losses.
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The investments that have the greatest savings tend to be public goods, such as sea walls and flood defences, with few capturable revenues for private investors. The private sector has an important role to play in developing resilience technologies and implementing resilience investments, but 90% of the time, the public sector ends up paying.
Many call on rich nations to provide more grant support for the climate vulnerable. But grants are shrinking, so we must consider other ways to unlock more investment.
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First, the major players who influence debt sustainability – ratings agencies such as Fitch and Moody’s, private investors, the IMF, the World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) – could change their approach. Too often, the risks of climate shocks are priced into debt repayments without considering the opportunity to gain by making countries more resilient to them. This makes it harder for countries to do the right thing.
Second, the most climate-vulnerable nations will need new borrowing instruments that are low-cost, long-term and flexible, for example ensuring that debt interest repayment timings can be adjusted if a disaster such as a devastating hurricane strikes.
Because of their AAA credit ratings, MDBs like the World Bank are best positioned to help. Small island nations require an estimated $36 billion for adaptation efforts but received a fraction of that last year, and the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) have committed to raising their adaptation finance portfolio overall to 50% of climate finance, up from 30%.
Third, climate-vulnerable countries are still paying a huge portion of their tax revenues in servicing debt. More can be done to break this vicious cycle, and one solution is something called a debt-for-resilience swap. That’s when a AAA-rated guarantor guarantees the debt of a climate-vulnerable country, allowing it to borrow at significantly lower interest rates. The proceeds are then used to buy back expensive debt – keeping the level of debt unchanged, but re-routing interest savings for resilience investments. Barbados, the Bahamas and Ecuador have done debt-for-climate swaps, but guarantors are in limited supply.
Comment: Can COP30 mark a turning point for climate adaptation?
To tackle this challenge, the IDB and other MDBs are developing the first-of-its-kind Multi-Guarantor Debt for Resilience Facility, where multiple guarantors work together to unlock more debt swaps on a larger scale.
In these difficult times, when climate change is driving ever more dangerous and unpredictable impacts in vulnerable places, we must press forward with further reforms. Bridgetown has already channelled hundreds of billions into building stable countries with a secure future – something that benefits all of us. Now we all need to raise our adaptation ambitions.
The post Hurricane Melissa’s destruction shows need for climate resilience push appeared first on Climate Home News.
Hurricane Melissa’s destruction shows need for climate resilience push
Jackie Chesnutt, who lives outside San Angelo, is tired of pollution from wells she says should have been plugged years ago. Experts say Texas rules allow companies to defer plugging wells for far too long.
Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
Low-Producing Oil Wells in Texas Cause Headaches for Landowners
An interview with author Catherine Coleman Flowers.
The fourth installment in our special Earth Day series
When the sciences and the humanities; democracy and ecology, are all under common and increasing attack, the efforts of independent experts and researchers matter more than ever.
David Ritter
So often in life, our most authentic moments of joy are the result of years of shared effort, and the culmination of a kind of deep faith in what is possible.
A few weeks ago, I had the honour of being in Canberra, along with some fellow environmentalists and scientists, to witness the enactment of the High Seas Biodiversity Bill 2026 by our federal parliament.
This was the moment that the Global Ocean Treaty—one of the most significant environmental agreements of our time—was given force through a domestic Australian law.
If you are part of the great Greenpeace family, you will know exactly why this was such a huge deal. The high seas make up around 60 per cent of the Earth’s surface and for too long, they have been subjected to open plunder. Now, for the first time in human history, there is an international instrument that enables the creation of massive high seas sanctuaries within which the ocean can be protected. This is a monumental collective achievement by Greenpeace and all the other groups who have campaigned for high seas marine sanctuaries for many years.
But as momentous as the ratification was, the parliamentary proceedings were distinctly lacking in drama or fanfare–so much so, that Labor MP backbencher Renee Coffey felt the need to gesture to those of us in the gallery with a grin, to indicate that the process was over and done.
The modesty of the moment had me thinking about the decades of quiet dedication by many hands that are invariably required to achieve great social change. In particular, I found myself thinking about researchers. So much of the expert academic work that underpins achievements like the Global Ocean Treaty is slow, painstaking, solitary—and often out of sight.
I think of the persistence and tenacity of researchers as an expression of love, founded in an authentic sense of wonder and curiosity about the world—and frequently linked to a deep ethical desire to protect that source of wonderment.
In 2007, one of the very first things I was given to read after starting with Greenpeace as an oceans campaigner in London was a report entitled Roadmap to Recovery: A global network of marine reserves. Specific physical sensations can tend to stick in the mind from periods of personally significant transitions, and the tactile reminiscence of holding the thin cardboard of the modest grey cover of that report is deeply embedded in my memory. I suspect I still even have that original copy in a box somewhere.
Written by a team of scientists led by Professor Callum Roberts, a marine conservation biologist from the University of York, the Roadmap provided the first scientifically informed vision of a large-scale global network of high seas marine sanctuaries, protecting the world’s oceans at scale. Of course, twenty years ago, this idea felt more like utopian science fiction, because there was no Global Oceans Treaty. But what seemed fanciful at the start of this century is now possible-–and I have every confidence the creation of large scale high seas marine sanctuaries will now happen through the application of ongoing campaigning effort—but we would never have gotten this far without the dedication of researchers, driven by their love of the oceans. And now here we are, with the ability for humanity to legally protect the high seas for the first time.
Campaigning and research so often work hand in hand like this: the one identifying the need and the solutions; the other driving the change. Because in a world of powerful vested interests, good science alone doesn’t shift decision makers—that takes activism and campaigning—but equally, there must be a basis of evidence and reason on which to build our public advocacy.
So, I want to take a moment to think with love and appreciation for everyone who has contributed to making this possible. I’ve never met the team of scientists who authored the original Roadmap, so belatedly but sincerely, then, to Leanne Mason, Julie P. Hawkins, Elizabeth Masden, Gwilym Rowlands, Jenny Storey and Anna Swift—and to every other researcher and scientist who has been involved in demonstrating why the Global Oceans Treaty has been so badly needed over the years—thank you for your commitment and devotion.
And to everyone out there who continues to believe that evidence and truth matter, and that our magnificent, fragile world deserves our respectful curiosity and study as an expression of our awe and enchantment, thank you for your conscientiousness.
When the sciences and the humanities; democracy and ecology, are all under common and increasing attack, the efforts of independent experts and researchers matter more than ever. You have Greenpeace’s deepest gratitude. Every day, we build on the foundations of your work and dedication. Thank you.
Q & A
I have been asked several times in recent weeks what the ongoing war means for the renewable energy transition in Australia.
While some corners of the fossil fuel lobby and the politicians captured by these vested interests have been very quick to use this crisis to call for more oil exploration and gas pipelines, the reality is that the current energy crisis has revealed the commonsense case for renewable energy.
As many, including climate and energy minister Chris Bowen have noted, renewable energy is affordable, inexhaustible, and sovereign—its supply cannot be blocked by warmongers or conflict. People intuitively know this; it’s why sales of electric cars have climbed to an all-time high, it’s why interest in rooftop solar and batteries has skyrocketed in recent months.
The reality is that oil and gas are to blame for much of the cost-of-living pain we’re feeling right now; fossil fuels are the disease, not the cure. If Australia were further along in our renewable energy transition and EV uptake, we would be much better insulated from petrol and gas price shocks and supply chain disruptions.
Yes, we need short-term solutions to ease the very real cost-of-living pressures that Australian communities and workers are facing as a result of fuel shortages. While replacement supplies is no doubt a valid step for now—Greenpeace is also backing taxes on the war profits of gas corporations to fund relief measures for Australians—in the long term, we will only get off the rollercoaster of fossil fuel dependency and price volatility if we break free from fossil fuels and accelerate progress towards an energy system built on 100% renewable energy, backed by storage.
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