KINGSTON, Jamaica – Jamaica’s ability to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change is to be bolstered through a major partnership with several international partners.

The collaboration was announced during the 2023 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Morocco on Wednesday.

This follows the US$764 million Resilience and Sustainability Facility arrangement approved by the IMF in March 2023, which supports reforms to strengthen Jamaica’s physical and fiscal resilience to climate change.

Under the latest initiative, the Government will work alongside the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Green Climate Fund (GCF), the United Kingdom, and the European Investment Bank (EIB).

According to a release on the IMF’s website, the collaborators are taking a “three-pronged approach” to boost Jamaica’s climate-smart development.

This will include a project preparation facility (PPF), which is to develop a pipeline of resilient climate-smart public-private partnerships and generate a robust channel of bankable projects required to scale up private investments across Jamaica, while reducing the financing burden on the public sector.

Both the Government of Jamaica and IDB have committed resources to establish the PPF, with discussions involving other development partners under way to scale up this initiative in the future.

Additionally, the Government, GCF and EIB are taking the lead in developing a new Jamaica Green Facility, to be based locally.

The GCF will provide credit and capacity development to finance local climate projects directly or through local financial institutions. Some of the areas that can be supported include climate-smart agriculture, energy efficiency, water resource management and sustainable transport..

The Jamaica Green Facility, once established, is expected to pave the way for the country’s other bilateral and multilateral financing partners to support it through additional funding, technical support, and capitalisation.

This will, in turn, provide a platform where the Government and development partners can pool resources to provide programmatic support to projects that are in line with Jamaica’s climate ambitions.

“In this way, this facility will trial a country-led approach to simplifying and scaling-up international climate finance provisions in line with recommendations of the Taskforce on Access to Climate Finance and, additionally, mobilise the £7 million of financing to be made available by the UK through this initiative,” the IMF release stated.

Jamaica is also to benefit from low-cost and long-term financing instruments from the EIB to support investment in resilient water and waste treatment infrastructure, flood and coastal protection or other sectors vulnerable to climate risks.

In his response, Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Dr Nigel Clarke, said the collaborative three-pronged approach “will catalyse new and larger amounts of private finance that boosts Jamaica’s climate smart development”.

Dr Clarke cited the importance of international partnerships, noting that “Jamaica’s development will require significant and sustained infrastructure investment that outstrips the resource capacity of the Government”.

We will, therefore, need to attract local and international private investment through structured transactions. In addition, Jamaica’s exposure to climate events makes it critical that such investments are climate smart and resilient. The costs of preparing projects, however, compete for scarce resources. In addition, accessing international climate finance for isolated investments often suffers from deficiencies of scale,” he stated.

“These developments represent substantial policy dividends for Jamaica, accruing from our climate finance reforms which have been supported by the IMF’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust Programme,” Dr Clarke added.

Minister of State in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Andrew Mitchell, said the United Kingdom “is delighted to be working with Jamaica through providing technical assistance to support increased investment in climate resilient infrastructure”.

Managing Director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, stated that “the IMF is committed to supporting our members’ economic and financial sector policies to meet their climate goals”.

“Reforms supported by the fund’s RST programme, built on Jamaica’s home-grown climate policies, were prepared in close collaboration with the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and other international partners with the goal of catalysing climate finance. We continue to work closely with these partners since the RST programme approval to further catalyse climate finance,” she added.

Vice-President of the EIB, Ricardo Mourinho Félix; President, IDB Group, Ilan Goldfajn; and Executive Director of the GCF, Mafalda Duarte, also welcomed the partnership.

– JIS