Vineil Narayan on Vio Island in Lautoka. Narayan is climate finance expert who talks about how the CommonSensing project is assisting small island states with finance and tools to mitigate climate change and its devastating effects.

By Neena Bhandari
Sydney, Australia, Sep 10 2021 (IPS)

The UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Programme (IPP) CommonSensing is led by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) through the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT), which is working with selected partners including the Commonwealth Secretariat, to improve resilience to the effects of climate change in Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

Vineil Narayan, Climate Finance Specialist and Head of Climate Change and International Cooperation Division, Ministry of Economy, Fiji, talks about the use of CommonSensing data in climate change adaptation and mitigation; and its potential in accessing the much-needed climate finance.

Neena Bhandari: How easy or difficult has it been for Fiji to access climate finance?

Vineil Narayan: Climate finance is a broad term, which includes public and private sectors. For Small Island Developing States (SIDS), particularly in the Pacific, one of the key issues is to be able to attract appropriate financing for climate-centric projects and development programmes.

There’s a massive mismatch between climate finance mobilised and climate finance needs of the region. In the public sector space, it has been relatively less difficult for us to attract climate finance that’s coming through bilateral support from countries or the Green Climate Fund (GCF). But we have been struggling to attract climate finance at an appropriate scale from the private sector. It is because we’re competing against larger economies with greater returns and potential for investors.

CommonSensing tracks Cyclone Harold through the Pacific Islands using data from satellites. The severe tropical cyclone caused widespread destruction in the Solomon Islands, Vanautu, Fiji and Tonga in 2020. Credit: CommonSensing

NB: Why time is of the essence for accessing climate finance for Fiji and other Pacific Island countries, which are facing immediate impacts of climate change and are more vulnerable to its consequences?

VN: In countries such as the United States and Australia, the impacts of climate change, for example, frequency and intensity of bushfires, are only being felt now and people are recognising that climate change is actually happening. But for us in the Pacific, climate change has been a fundamental development challenge for decades. It has already stifled our development progress over a long period of time. The urgency for climate action is not new for us in the region. ‘Time is of the essence’ is something that we’ve been saying to the world for so many years.

When The Paris Agreement was being discussed, the Pacific countries particularly demanded limiting temperature target to 1.5 degrees Celsius to reduce climate impacts. We have villages blown off the map due to storms. We have communities that are disappearing due to sea-level rise. It is posing a significant threat to our low-lying atoll neighbours like Kiribati and Tuvalu. They will disappear within the next few decades if we are not able to curtail rising sea levels expedited by climate change.

Climate change is an immediate existential threat for us. It underscores the need for immediate action and for that we need to increase and expedite the mobilisation of climate finance at a significant amount for adaptation and mitigation.

CommonSensing uses satellite remote sensing capabilities to support the Governments of Fiji, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu in their efforts to build resilience to the devastating impacts of climate change and improve access to climate finance. Credit: CommonSensing

NB: How are you using the CommonSensing tools for climate change relocation and disaster risk reduction and response?

VN: Information is power. When adaptation projects and programmes from SIDS go to the GCF, we are asked: What’s the adaptation rationale? It baffles me because the impacts of climate change and the need for adaptation is clearly reflected in the national development priorities, particularly those of the Pacific Island countries. So, for us to be asked to rationalise it is like a slap on the face.

To develop that climate rationale, one of the key things is to have appropriate access to data and information, which are crucial for mobilising finance. The CommonSensing Project helps us to provide that evidence-based rationale to access greater climate finance.

The CommonSensing team, working with United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), has been instrumental in helping to map out both disaster response measures and needs. For example, mapping out what would be the level of disaster impact based on the trajectory of a cyclone – number of households in that area, population, number of bridges, water facilities and other infrastructure information, as well as identifying what’s the level of damage and coverage that would be needed for disaster risk reduction and response. This is something that the CommonSensing Project has actually helped the National Disaster Management Office with, doing post-disaster mapping of areas impacted by three major cyclones that have hit Fiji over the past 14 months.

With regards to relocation, it is important that when you relocate a community from point A to B, you are able to take into account the geospatial dynamics and hazards. In the past, a relocation happened where a coastal community was moved, but torrential rainfall and limited geospatial knowledge of that area resulted in landslides.

The CommonSensing Project helps us to better understand, for example, the safe elevation level of a particular area where we want to relocate a community; how far away it is from the school, the electricity grid, the road? This geospatial information and hazard mapping is very powerful for us to be able to make informed policy decisions on whether and how to relocate a community.

In addition to that, the Fijian Government has developed the Planned Relocation Guidelines, which helps government agencies better understand what roles and responsibilities they have when it comes to relocating a community. We need to consider not only the infrastructure movement but also socio-economic livelihood transition and customary obligations to ensure that the community being relocated is accepted by the community, where they are being relocated.

We are also developing a standard operating procedure – a step-by-step process of how a community will be relocated. As part of the standard operating procedures, one of the fundamental things is to do a Climate Vulnerability Assessment of a particular community. And within that risk assessment, one of the key steps is to use CommonSensing data to be able to ascertain whether that community or that area in which the community is from, is actually facing geospatial hazards.

The geospatial CommonSensing data helps to identify whether sea-level rise would be an issue; what would be the appropriate vegetation around a particular area so we are able to better understand what would be the livelihoods of that community. For example, if we move a coastal community, which is dependent on fishing, inland then there will be a need for capacity building and livelihood assistance for them to transition from being a fishing community to an agricultural community.

This robust CommonSensing data helps in informed decision making when it comes to relocation work and post-disaster needs assessments.

NB: What is the potential of this satellite-based Earth Observation data for accessing climate finance?

VN: Currently, we are not using this data to access climate finance, but that is our ultimate aim. We would like to weave this information into our future climate finance applications to make them bankable. We’re not only working on doing that, but as part of the CommonSensing Project, we are also receiving support from the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub.

For four weeks, we’re currently getting together 19 teams of stakeholders in workshops to develop project proposals by using CommonSensing data. These project proposals will feed into the project pipeline for the Fijian Government that we want to submit to the GCF for funding

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Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland in The Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian. Scotland expressed concerns about the impact of climate change on exacerbating superstorms, like this 2019 event which took a massive human toll. Credit: Commonwealth

By Alison Kentish
London, Sep 8 2021 (IPS)

This November, five years after signing the Paris Agreement and pledging to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with a further target of below 1.5 degrees Celsius, world leaders will meet in Glasgow, UK amid COVID-19 pandemic shocks, rising hunger and an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that warns of more extreme temperature, droughts, forest fires and ice sheet loss due to human activity.

The leaders are expected to submit more ambitious targets to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Out of the 197 countries which signed the Paris Agreement, 54 are members of the Commonwealth. That association has been helping its members to craft their national climate targets and follow through with implementation.

IPS spoke to Commonwealth Secretary-General the Rt Hon Patricia Scotland QC about the Association’s climate initiatives, the unique challenges faced by small states, its focus on gender mainstreaming and access to financing for critical adaptation and mitigation projects.

Scotland is the sixth Secretary-General of the Commonwealth and the first woman to hold the post. The Commonwealth is an association of 54 countries that work together to advance shared values enshrined in the Commonwealth Charter, including democracy, human rights and sustainable development.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

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Inter Press Service (IPS): Secretary-General, it is a pleasure to be able to interview you from a small community in Dominica. Dominica continues to be proud of not just being a member of the Commonwealth but the land of your birth and the home of the Baroness Patricia Scotland Primary School.

In Dominica, we know that the Commonwealth is invested in climate change, and I’m happy to be speaking to you about one of the most pressing issues of our time.

The IPCC report has been dominating the climate change headlines in the lead-up to COP26. It is a sobering report that calls for urgent, increasingly ambitious action by world leaders to tackle the climate crisis. What does the report mean for the 54 member countries of the Commonwealth?

The Rt Hon. Patricia Scotland QC (PS): The latest IPCC report is a stark warning for humanity. One cannot argue with the definitive scientific evidence in the report, which shows how climate change is intensifying on a global scale, with widespread impacts. Some of these impacts are unravelling on our television screens and even right before our eyes, including increasingly destructive extreme weather events – from monstrous super storms in the Pacific and Caribbean to deadly floods in Africa and raging wildfires in Europe.

In many ways, the report reaffirms many of the concerns the Commonwealth has been advocating for over the past 30 years, particularly in relation to small and other vulnerable states. It also challenges us, as an international community, to respond – urgently!

We no longer have any excuse not to act. We already have a blueprint for international cooperation in the form of the Paris Agreement. What’s more, emerging from the Covid pandemic, we have a critical window to set a new development path and build back better. What the world needs now is urgent, decisive and sustained climate action. As I’ve always said: if not now, then when; if not us, then who?

Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland at COP 25. She was speaking to IPS ahead of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) to be held in Glasgow in October and November 2021. Credit: Commonwealth

(IPS): We know that Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are important to gauge how each country intends to do its part to reduce global warming. We also know that new NDCs should be submitted every five years, but some countries have not met the deadlines. How is the Commonwealth assisting member countries with articulating and submitting their NDCs?

(PS): The Nationally Determined Contributions – or national climate plans – are at the heart of the Paris Agreement. I cannot overstate their importance. It is through the NDCs that we translate this global agreement into reality on the country level.

This is why the Commonwealth Secretariat is working with the NDC Partnership to support governments in enhancing and delivering their national climate plans under the Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP).

Through this initiative, we embed highly skilled Commonwealth National Climate Finance Advisers in countries to fast-track the process. In Jamaica and Eswatini, our experts help create frameworks to include climate-related spending in national budget planning. In Belize and Zambia, our advisers assist in developing national climate finance strategies.

Our flagship Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub has also deployed advisers in nine other countries across Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific to help governments develop strong climate finance proposals for NDC implementation and wider climate action.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland pictured in Seychelles. She is particularly concerned about the financing and support of small island developing nations with their climate change challenges. Credit: Commonwealth

(IPS): How can Commonwealth countries help each other with their NDCs submission and implementation?

(PS): The Commonwealth is a family of 54 equal and independent nations, spanning five geographical regions with a combined population of 2.4 billion people, 60 percent of whom are under age 30. Thirty-two members are considered ‘small states’, while we also have some of the world’s biggest economies along with emerging countries in our group.

One of the most valuable aspects of the Commonwealth is, therefore, its diversity and incredible capacity to be a platform for countries to share experiences on a wide range of global issues, examining what works and what does not work and cross-fertilising ideas. Building on this, the Secretariat organises regular virtual events, convening a range of actors from different regions and sectors to exchange knowledge and best practices for climate action.

We also welcome the generous financial and in-kind support from member countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom and Mauritius, which enables the work of key programmes like the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub and the CommonSensing Project (funded by the UK). The CCFAH ‘hub and spokes’ model ensures a dynamic network of expertise and a useful mechanism for cross-regional dialogue and international cooperation around NDCs.

(IPS): Access to finance for climate adaptation and mitigation initiatives continues to be an issue of concern, particularly for small island developing states. What mechanisms have the Commonwealth Secretariat established to assist countries in financing their climate commitments?

(PS): Funding for climate action is absolutely critical for the survival of our small and vulnerable member states. However, a concerning paradox is that countries most vulnerable to climate change are often the ones that find it most challenging to access climate finance.

This is mainly because they have constrained resources or capacity. For example, a small island developing nation may have just a small ministry or unit dedicated to climate change, and a single officer, if any, focused on mobilising finance. When you look at the complex requirements, application processes and varying criteria set by different international climate funds, it is clear there is a gap.

Consequently, many countries can spend months and even years working through the process to access finance, delaying climate action whilst impacts are ongoing.

This is why the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub (CCFAH) was initiated in 2015, whereby long-term Commonwealth national climate finance advisers are embedded in government departments to help them develop successful funding proposals, and who then pass on the knowledge and skills to local officials and actors. As of June 2021, CCFAH has helped raise US$ 43.8 million of climate finance, including US$ 3 million of country co-financing for 31 approved projects. More than US$762 million worth of projects are in the pipeline.

We are also looking at innovative ways to fill the data gap in project proposals. Under the CommonSensing Project, we work with UNITAR-UNOSAT, the UK Space Agency and others, to use earth observation technology and satellite data to build more robust, evidence-based cases for climate finance in Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

(IPS): According to agencies like UNICEF, women and girls are disproportionately impacted by climate change – a reflection of patterns of gender inequality seen in other areas. Are you satisfied with the work of the Commonwealth in ensuring gender integration across climate change initiatives?

Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland planting mangroves in Sri Lanka. Scotland believes that the diversity of the Commonwealth is its strength in tackling climate issues. Credit: Commonwealth

(PS): To tackle climate change, we simply cannot ignore the role of half the world’s people who are women. In fact, the most recent Commonwealth Women’s Affairs Ministers Meeting in 2019 reiterated gender and climate change as one of four priority areas on gender equality. It is absolutely a top concern for the Secretariat, which is committed to mainstreaming gender across its work programmes.

All our regional/national climate finance advisers are expected to mainstream gender and youth considerations in their operations. All their projects must be responsive to the needs of women, men, girls and boys, as equal participants in decision-making and beneficiaries of climate action.

For instance, the Commonwealth National Climate Finance Adviser in Jamaica helped the government secure a grant of US$270,000 from the Green Climate Fund for the project ‘Facilitating a Gender Responsive Approach to Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation’.

The Secretariat recently launched a gender analysis of member country climate commitments. This research will help us better understand the current situation and inform future activities and programmes.

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