Mechanism to track finance

A national climate finance tracking mechanism is being piloted to monitor the appropriation of climate change funds in Pacific Island Countries (PICs).

Pacific Island Forum Secretariat (PIFS) Climate Change Finance Advisor, Exsley Taloiburi, said the tracking tool is being tested in two countries with a report to be presented at the 2020 Forum Economic Ministers Meeting (FEMM).

“The Forum Economic Ministers Meeting last year asked the Forum Secretariat to develop a National Climate Finance Tracking Mechanism or a tracking tool, which we have now developed it to a prototype and currently being piloted in two countries, specifically Vanuatu and Solomon Islands, working with their Ministries of Finance to apply the prototype, and report back with findings and outputs in the next FEMM meeting next year.”

According to Exsley, PIC’s have accessed over US$1.1 billion in the last decade alone from climate fund donors and multilateral and bilateral sources.

Eleven Pacific Island countries have had hard projects approved, totaling about US$58 million from the Green Climate Fund alone.

Taloiburi said this is a testament that our countries and our governments are increasing the momentum in terms of the accessibility to these resources.

The focus now is to ensure the funds are effectively used by PIC’s to assist communities hit hard by climate change.

“At the moment our countries in the Pacific, including Papua New Guinea, have accessed a lot of money from these international climate finance sources. The issue that we currently have or we are grappling with at the moment is that we don’t have a tracking mechanism to actually track the financial flows from the pledged amounts internationally and how much of that actually trickles down to the country level.

“And also, how it’s been expanded from our Department of Finance or Department of Treasury at the National Level, the beneficiary sectors and also the effectiveness and quality of those investments.

“The intention of that is to track the effectiveness and the quality of those resources that have been accessed by our Pacific Island countries to see that there is tangible impact to the most vulnerable people living in the community from those millions of dollars that have been accessed,” he said.

(Climate Change Finance Advisor, Exsley Taloiburi)

Author: 
Cedric Patjole