Grenada leads Climate Change discussions at World Bank Meetings ST. GEORGES, GRENADA, October 13, 2014 - GIS: Given the leadership of Grenada’s Prime Minister, Dr. the Right Honourable Keith Mitchell, on the issue of Climate Change, World Bank Vice President for Climate Change, Ms. Rachel Kyte invited Prime Minister Mitchell to speak at the two major fora held on Climate Change at the World Bank on October 10 and 11th. At the Resilience Dialogue hosted by CNN’s veteran reporter on Hurricane Katrina, Prime Minister Mitchell cited Grenada’s experience with climate change and welcomed the World Bank’s Small Island States Resilience Initiative. This initiative could become one of the first programs under the global Green Climate Fund which is being established under the United Nations Convention for Climate Change. So far, Germany has made a firm pledge of $1 billion to the fund and recently, at the UN Secretary General’s Climate Conference in New York, France pledged a similar amount to take effect over the course of a few years. France will host the 21st Conference on Climate Change in Paris in November / December 2015. It is anticipated that this will give rise to a new platform for climate action with the requisite legal instruments and financing facilities. Prime Minister Mitchell welcomed the World Bank’s announcement and added that islands like Grenada needed to urgently access concessional funding. Prime Minister Mitchell referred to the frequency of hurricanes in the Caribbean which was linked to the indebtedness of some of the Caribbean islands. He lamented that middle-income countries, such as Grenada, were highly vulnerable, did not have access to sufficient concessional funding and therefore were reliant on expensive capital from the international private sector. This he said, added to the cycle of indebtedness. While at the Small States Forum, World Bank executives said that they were addressing this issue by piloting new financial innovations with Grenada. In addition to the remarks of Prime Minister Mitchell, The Dialogue on Climate Resilience heard interventions from: Tatsuo Yamasaki, Vice Minister for Finance for International Affairs, Japan; Rachel Kyte, Vice President and Special Envoy for Climate Change, World Bank Group; Kristalina Georgieva, European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 12:53:19 +0000
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