By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

DELEGATES at COP28 agreed to introduce a loss and damage fund for small island developing states and other vulnerable territories such as The Bahamas to recover from storms, floods, and other adverse weather events influenced by climate change.

“We trust that this promise will turn into reality as the days go on with our negotiations and discussions with world leaders who are here with us,” Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis said yesterday in a video message from Dubai, where COP28 is being held.

“The key here is to ensure that the industrialized world recognize their responsibility to small island developing states like ours, recognise that they have to have a moral obligation, and we’re trying to convert that moral obligation qualification into a legal and enforceable obligation to provide funding for loss and damage as a result of hurricanes and other devastating events related to climate change, and that’s where we are heading.”

 Mr Davis also spoke at the launch of The Bahamas Sustainable Investment Programme, an initiative, he said, that will help the country “survive an era of super-charged storms by creating super-charged, win-win investment partnerships.”

 “Along with our strategic advisors, Resilience Capital Ventures, we will work with regional and global capital market leaders to underwrite and put in place an innovative financing facility,” he said.

 “We aim to secure a facility of 500m US dollars in the first instance. Our priorities for this fund include spending to make our infrastructure more climate-resilient, our transition to clean energy, conservation of our coastal zones, reduction in biodiversity loss, regenerative agriculture, carbon sequestration, and participation in natural asset-backed carbon credit programmes. Blended finance is a smart way to close the climate financing gap at a time when solutions cannot be postponed.”

 Minister Jerome Fitzgerald, Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of the Prime Minister, said the programme was carefully designed by Resilience Capital Ventures (RCV) in collaboration with policy teams.