Small Island Developing States Capacity and Resilience Programme (SIDAR)

Overview

The SIDAR programme is expected to build on ongoing efforts of the CCCCC and contribute directly to Outcome 1.2 of the SIP “Increased finance flows to Member States to address climate resilience/climate change priorities” by:

(1) providing research/evidence-based policy guidance to stakeholders of the region; (2) supporting the climate finance agenda to better build the resilience of the Caribbean Small Island and Low-lying Coastal Developing States (SIDS) to the effects of climate change, and (3) assisting in the development and implementation of transformative climate change adaptation and mitigation projects/programme in the Caribbean.

These efforts are expected to be supported by the CCCCC well-oiled and functioning Programme Development and Management Unit (PDMU). The PDMU is expected to play a major role in leveraging SIDAR resources at scale to build climate resilience across the region. The PDMU, through enhancing its capacity, will work to, inter alia, develop project/programme funding proposals to unlock financing flowing to the region, and, through training, help to enhance the capacity of CARICOM Member States to improve their ability to develop their own funding proposals.

At the same time, the CCCCC will work, as it has been doing, with partner agencies, to improve coordination and cooperation as well as to harmonize existing efforts to improve speed and scale. The collaboration will also allow each agency to pursue climate finance on their own or collaboratively with the CCCCC or another regional agency.

The SIDAR programme aims to deliver the following:

a) identify key challenges faced by the Caribbean SIDS in planning for and accessing climate and other forms of concessional financing, and implementing programmes for enhanced mitigation, adaptation, and resilience building. The Diagnostic Consultancy Report prepared by the CCCCC for the FCDO identifies major implementation, capacity barriers, and policy frameworks impacting Caribbean SIDS’ ability to access climate and other concessional financing, and implementation impediments that exist.

b) Furthermore, the Diagnostic Report (DR) identifies pragmatic and innovative approaches to facilitate Caribbean SIDS taking advantage of the financial opportunities provided to present coherent, targeted, impactful, and transformative interventions to unlock greater volumes of climate and concessional financing for adaptation and mitigation interventions and climate resilience building. These approaches include, but are not limited to, enhancing the project development capacity within the CCCCC and at the country level where possible, enhancing capacities through training and linking the SIDS region for more south-south cooperation and dialogue.

c) Lastly, the DR examines the indicators being proposed in the SIDAR programme and comment on their appropriateness to monitor the successes/progress under the programme as well as proposing modalities for their monitoring/tracking. This last point is essential as it remains critical that tracking of such indicators does not add an increased burden on SIDS.

This project is aligned to a consultancy completed by the CCCCC, on behalf of FCDO, that examined the factors affecting approval, absorption, and delivery of climate finance in selected Caribbean SIDS. That consultancy identified several supply and demand side constraints, inclusive of lack of human capacity, lack of coherence in access requirements among donors, long development and approval time for funding proposals and the complexity of unlocking climate financing.

The consultancy was expected to enhance complementarity and coherence among climate and other financing vehicles for the identification, prioritisation, development, and implementation of projects to support the transition to low-carbon and development systems resilient to climate change.