By Fay Simmons

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

The Prime Minister yesterday unveiled ambitions for The Bahamas to raise $500m to bolster its resiliency, and sustainability, against negative climate change impacts in partnership with Resilience Capital Ventures.

Philip Davis KC, unveiling the Bahamas Sustainable Investment Programme at the Clinton Global Initiative forum, said: “With our strategic advisors, Resilience Capital Ventures, we will work with regional and global capital market leaders to underwrite and place an innovative financing facility with a target of $500m.

“Our priorities include climate-resilient infrastructure, our clean energy transition, coastal zone conservation, reducing 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.”

Mr Davis explained that The Bahamas is in “urgent need” of climate financing solutions as it is still reeling from the financial impact of four major hurricanes and has difficulties accessing low-cost funding due to its designation as a middle-income country.

He said: “A cruel irony is that those four massive hurricanes cost us billions, leaving us without the fiscal space we need to get ready for the next storms. Topping the lists of countries most vulnerable to climate change makes borrowing more expensive. Every single day we are paying for the hurricanes we’ve already suffered, and the ones still ahead of us.

“In addition, our nation’s middle income designation leaves us unable to access fair and concessional financing for recovery and adaptation. This traps us in a cycle in which the servicing of our debt leaves very little to invest in building our resilience. We urgently need new and creative solutions to our climate financing.”

Mr Davis added that The Bahamas is set to become the first country to issue blue carbon credits, with its seagrass meadows - which act as a major ‘sink’ that traps carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere - now being mapped by scientists.

He said: “Instead of saying small island nation, say ‘large ocean state’. Our country’s seagrass meadows, which cover an astonishing 92,000 square kilometres, appear to be absorbing equal to or more carbon than the Amazon Rainforest.

“We have been mapping our seagrasses with the help of not just scientists but tiger sharks, who are a critical part of our underwater surveying team, wearing cameras and sending back data points. Those sharks are going to help us become the first country in the world to issue blue carbon credits. So, as you can see, small countries can be big pioneers. “