In its eight years of operation, the Green Climate Fund, a United Nations entity, has approved $1.2 billion worth of climate-related funding for Pacific small island developing states. Although it sounds like a ton of money, it’s not. Vanuatu, one such nation, estimates that it will need that much money alone by 2030 to handle global warming threats.
Although Pacific island nations have contributed less than one percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions, they’re perched on the edge of if not immersed in the widening climate crisis. Low-lying Pacific islands are disappearing in the fast-rising sea inch by inch.
Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands could all be swallowed up by the ocean by the end of the century, according to the Global Center for Climate Mobility, an advocacy group that partners with the UN to invest in what it calls “people-centered and community-based adaptation, climate-resilient development and safe migration responses.”
These three countries are increasingly hit by a constant series of devastating cyclones, floods and droughts linked to global warming. Rising sea levels and droughts both threaten the accessibility of safe drinking water, which is now the most serious challenge to some island states’ existence. Yet solutions remain evasive because the global money that may be available to remedy the problem is often out of reach.
“There’s been a systematic failure for all small island states to be able to receive climate finance,” said Sindra Sharma, a senior policy adviser at the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (Pican), a group of civil society organizations. “There’s a complete mismatch in terms of what the needs are and what is being provided” and “the needs are in billions.”
Indeed, despite the urgent threats to the smallest Pacific island nations’ well-being, they are struggling to get the financing they need to adapt and mitigate the effects of global warming, whether it is building desalination plants to ensure safe drinking water or reinforcing shorelines against the encroaching ocean.
While international platforms like the Green Climate Fund, which was created by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), have provided money for many climate-related initiatives in the Pacific region and elsewhere, it has yet to adjust its own processes to enable vulnerable countries to benefit from the very fund that was established to help them.
An exclusive analysis shared with PassBlue by the Climate Finance Access Network (CFAN), a nonprofit operation that assists small developing countries with their projects, calculated the $1.2 billion total pot needed for Pacific island nations. The network’s research also found that the amount is still far short of what these countries require to manage global warming effects.
Though the Green Climate Fund, or GCF, is one of only a few resources in which developing nations can access grants instead of loans for mitigation uses, many of the countries can’t cut through the red tape to get the money for critical projects.
A close look by PassBlue at how this problem particularly affects Kiribati, a highly vulnerable country in the middle of the Pacific, is part of our small states series on how these countries can optimize the UN multilateral system to prosper. Kiribati’s case represents the struggle, however, to take advantage of the system. (Kiribati officials didn’t respond to requests for comments from PassBlue.)
Close encounters with the equator
Kiribati consists of 33 coral islands divided among three island groups: the Gilbert Islands, the Phoenix Islands and the Line Islands. Most of the islands are atolls sitting close to the equator. The challenges for the country are as enormous as the vast ocean surrounding them. An immediate task related to its survival is how to cut through the Green Climate Fund pot’s bureaucracy when Kiribati’s own government agencies are understaffed and the population needs something as urgent as potable water.
But not all is lost for Pacific island nations. Neighboring Vanuatu successfully rallied the UN General Assembly last year to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice that could establish a legal path for small nations to take rich ones to court for climate-related damages.
“Today, we have witnessed a win for climate justice of epic proportions,” the prime minister of Vanuatu, Ishmael Kalsakau, said after the General Assembly adopted the resolution in March 2023.
He added: “Today’s historic resolution is the beginning of a new era in multilateral climate cooperation, one that is more fully focused on upholding the rule of international law and an era that places human rights and intergenerational equity at the forefront of climate decision-making.”
Vanuatu shows how some tiny countries can navigate the complexities of the multilateral system, while the example of Kiribati reflects how difficult it can be to just overcome a bureaucratic thicket, even though two limited-scope projects — a desalination plant coupled with a photovoltaic generating system — were approved by the GCF in 2018.
“Climate change finances still appear to be disconnected from the priorities of vulnerable local communities and people most impacted by climate change,” last year’s UN Development Program report analyzing the Green Climate Fund and its use for the Pacific stated.
With the evolving realization that climate change action must happen today and not tomorrow, the advances made during the COP28, the annual UN-led conference on global warming held in Dubai last fall, nations agreed to establish a loss and damage fund and approved a landmark agreement for the world to move from fossil fuels toward renewable energy.
Yet climate financing for the world’s most vulnerable countries, experts say, remains out of reach four months after COP28 ended.
Where’s the water?
In Kiribati, a nation of 135,763 people, only residents who have enough tanks to collect rainwater for their personal use are considered self-sufficient, said Ruth Cross-Kwansing, a community leader and technical expert specializing in climate change and sanitation as well as a recipient of the Kiribati Order of Merit, the highest honor in the country. But most people cannot access potable water.
“Almost the entire population is affected by water insecurity,” Cross-Kwansing said in an interview over the phone from Kiribati.
Many areas in the country, especially the outer islands, lack consistent access to safe drinking water because the public supply runs just every couple of days. Even in urban areas, the population depends heavily on rainfall. A recent drought even warranted the Asian Development Bank to provide a grant to help with safe-water availability.
In the outer islands, people rely on communal water catchment systems, which are also insufficient. Or they boil brackish water. Where there is a public water supply, people wait in lines with their buckets, limiting the amount of water they can carry home. Moreover, the water they get from the public tanks or wells can be contaminated by seawater or waste, making it unsafe to drink.
“People still desperately need access to safe drinking water,” Cross-Kwansing said.
According to tests done in Kiribati at the end of 2021 by the ChildFund Alliance, an international network of humanitarian organizations, more than 70 percent of households surveyed had unsafe or likely-to-be-unsafe water due to bacterial contamination. Only a quarter of public rain tanks had potable water. Kiribati has the highest infant mortality rates in the Pacific, often linked to diarrhea, dysentery and gastroenteritis from unsafe drinking water.
So far, Kiribati has gotten only one project — financed by the GCF — valued at an estimated $58 million, with $28.6 million coming from the fund itself and the rest from partner grants. The project is to build a desalination plant and a solar energy system to run in South Tarawa, the capital, to be done by 2028. The country has not been able to access climate financing to help people in the outer islands, however, where the water situation is dire.
“It’s quite difficult to access those funds,” Cross-Kwansing said of the overall needs of the country. The only project addressing the water security issues in the outer islands is a multimillion dollar project financed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
“The need is now, people need safe water today,” she added, “and receiving any climate financed assistance is many years away.”
The Green Climate Fund didn’t respond to PassBlue’s request for a comment.
Kiribati has one person handling applications for climate funding. It’s also hard for the country to find people who can administer such projects and manage grant requirements. The standards for accreditation and approval of project processes and disbursements present high bars for stretched-thin governments like Kiribati.
“They are having a hard time trying to recruit people from the outside, even the people from the inside from Kiribati,” Jale Samuwai, a project leader coordinating the Pacific countries’ portfolio for the Climate Finance Access Network (CFAN), said. “But once they join that particular ministry, they get poached by donors and partners. So, it’s this constant revolving door of people. There’s no stability in institutional knowledge, they have to constantly rebuild.”
Small island and other developing states can spend years writing grant proposals and getting them approved only to end up with staffing shortages when the proposal gets to the next step.
“All Pacific islands are severely understaffed,” Laetitia De Marez, senior director of CFAN’s Islands Energy Program, said.
“All the other ministries, all the agencies, everyone wears four or five hats,” De Marez added. “And it makes it very difficult for them to keep pushing for their project along the pipeline. Because that’s usually the issue — being able to be consistent in advancing the project.”
The lack of experienced staff particularly affects small nations’ abilities to get accreditation with the GCF, despite its goal to provide “direct” financing to grantees. Accreditation offers perks to fast-track project approval, to access funding for project preparations and to bestow what the fund calls “ownership”: instead of relying on consultants and middlemen organizations that fly in and take over the jobs, the local population is in charge.
Several countries from the Pacific islands region are pursuing accreditation with the GCF as a key priority, but only Fiji, Micronesia and the Cook Islands have won approval so far.
“It’s an excruciating process,” De Marez said. “It’s very intrusive, because they have to make sure that the organization has the capacity to endure the funding.” Accreditation requires institutions, including government ministries, to define and carry out new policies as well as update them.
“Our countries are very small,” Samuwai of CFAN said. “Our systems, our governance system, is just not that strong if you benchmark it to international standards.”
The Green Climate Fund is aware that small developing countries are having trouble accessing financing, and it says it is working with them to streamline the process. Recently, the fund updated the approval process for Pacific island nations for projects valued up to $25 million.
Many experts working with Pacific island nations in climate adaptation and financing acknowledged to PassBlue the fund’s willingness to engage with national and community leaders about the problems, but they don’t think the changes are enough. “The intention was good, but at the end of the day it’s not very much simplified,” De Marez said.
Earlier this year, however, a GCF grant for a Cook Island project took only 20 days from approval to first disbursement.
A South Seas triumph
In March 2023, Vanuatu won a major global victory in its push for holding rich countries accountable for the seriously damaging effects of global warming on smaller countries. It persuaded the 193-member UN General Assembly to request the International Court of Justice to issue an opinion on the obligations of developed countries in addressing climate change and its harms.
The nonbinding opinion is expected to be made by early 2025, and it could clarify how international laws apply to the effects of global warming. The decision could help channel any financial awards to go to the loss and damage fund agreed on by COP28.
Earlier this year, President Joe Biden signed federal legislation that would provide $7.1 billion in economic aid distributed over 20 years to Pacific island nations. The law symbolizes the battle being waged between the United States and China for military and economic dominance in the physically strategic and minerals-rich region. In 2022, for example, the Solomon Islands signed a security accord with China.
The billion-dollar package from the US is designated for the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau, and it will enable the American military to gain access to the islands, among other benefits.
“We are conscious that these funds will be targeted to specific areas and there will be conditions to apply,” Samuwai of CFAN said about the US largess. “We hope the needs and priorities of Pacific countries were taken into consideration and local leaders were consulted to maximize the impact of such funding.”
As Mark Brown, the Cook Islands prime minister, said during last year’s Pacific Islands Forum summit, “The geostrategic interest in our region may be at an all-time high, but it will not and it should not dictate how we advance and progress the priorities that we have determined.”
For Pacific island nations, the urgent priority is climate change.
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Anastasiia Carrier is a Detroit-based freelance reporter. She earned an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and her work has appeared in Politico Magazine, The Wire China and The Radcliffe Magazine.
Yes i agree that kiribati may be surrounded by water, but there’s not enough to drink because kiribati now is having a lot of people and it was overcrowded
Great Article