Minister of Housing, Urban Renewal and Climate Change, Pearnel Charles Jr, says he is pleased that Jamaica’s municipal corporations will benefit from financing under a climate change resilience pilot programme.

The announcement of the pilot programme was made by the Commonwealth Secretariat at the recently concluded COP26, the 26th United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference which was held at the SEC Centre in Glasgow, Scotland in the United Kingdom from October 31 to November 13.

This “very important programme”, according to Charles, will be executed under the Local Climate Adaptative Living Facility (LOCAL) and aims to build up capacity of municipal entities in Jamaica and other nations in the Commonwealth.

“This is a very critical programme because it will allow for us to not only build capacity but to identify the barriers that have been inherent in delaying how financing reaches to the communities to do the work that is needed. Jamaica was selected to benefit from and to be pioneers in defining the best mechanisms to get money from international organisations on the ground to the people to do the work that we need to build up resilience in Jamaica,” Charles said.

The climate change minister said the programme will address the issue where billions of dollars are allocated to countries like Jamaica but cannot be transferred in a timely manner.

“This kind of programme helps us to identify, use and deploy the money in a way that is efficient and effective. Sometimes you may find that you may have billions of dollars in a financial entity but it just can’t get to you in a timely manner and in a way that you can utilise it. We also have our own internal issues in terms of limited financial space and also how we structure our own financial system. This process is going to analyse all of that and examine best ways to get the financing to be effective and to be efficient,” he said, adding that Jamaica is not one of the greatest contributors to climate change but is among the nations feeling its negative effects.

Jamaica participated in a myriad of events at COP26, including the Commonwealth panel discussion, which was attended by Britain’s Prime Minister, Boris Johnson and UN Secretary General, António Guterres.

Charles described the event, which was also attended by Prime Minister Andrew Holness, as a “non-stop” 14-day conference and highlighted that Jamaica was one of the leading countries on the subject of adaptation, loss and damage.

“Loss and damage is an important issue and it is going to cause us to be integrated in the discussions on how we can now work with other countries to make sure that the framework for loss and damage is recognised and built out because loss and damage affects small countries like us.

“When you talk about adaptation, that is what you have to do before you get any hurricane, typhoon or flood. When you talk about loss and damage, you talking about the consequences after the events, that you can’t stop no matter what. Adaptation and loss and damage are critical issues to small countries like Jamaica and we are very happy to be leading that discussion on behalf of the COP26 president.

“Our ultimate goal was to ensure that COP was successful for us in terms of putting the right things on the table for discussion and advancing the more important issues, which is adaptation, loss and damage and most importantly, financing.”