Ryan Ba­choo

Re­port­ing from George­town, Guyana

Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali has called for the tripling of glob­al fi­nances to pro­tect na­ture and stave off the ef­fects cli­mate change is hav­ing on bio­di­ver­si­ty. He made the call as he ad­dressed the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Glob­al Bio­di­ver­si­ty Al­liance Sum­mit in George­town yes­ter­day.

Ali said the sum­mit was not just an­oth­er con­fer­ence but a ral­ly­ing cry.

Among the Cari­com lead­ers present at the sum­mit were Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley and prime min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Ralph Gon­salves. Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett is al­so present at the con­fer­ence.

Ali al­so used his ad­dress to call on de­vel­op­ment banks to in­vest in bio­di­ver­si­ty. His com­ments came on the same day that a land­mark ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion was hand­ed down by the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ), which said coun­tries have le­gal oblig­a­tions un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law to pro­tect the cli­mate sys­tem—not just moral ones.

He start­ed his ad­dress by out­lin­ing the star­tling glob­al sta­tis­tics that each year ten mil­lion hectares of for­est are lost, one mil­lion species are in dan­ger of be­com­ing ex­tinct and wet­lands are dis­ap­pear­ing three times faster than forests.

Ali said the world in­vests just $200 bil­lion per year in na­ture, but to meet the Glob­al Bio­di­ver­si­ty Frame­work tar­gets, it needs at least $700 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

He ex­plained, “That means we must more than triple glob­al fi­nance for na­ture, and we must en­sure that this fi­nance flows to where it is most need­ed—es­pe­cial­ly in the Glob­al South. The Glob­al Bio­di­ver­si­ty Al­liance will pri­ori­tise this. We are com­mit­ted to scal­ing blend­ed fi­nance to de-risk in­vest­ment in na­ture-based en­ter­pris­es, pi­lot­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty cred­its that re­ward stew­ard­ship, ex­pand­ing debt-for-na­ture swaps, mod­elled on our own ex­pe­ri­ence and sup­port­ing com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven fi­nance mod­els that place In­dige­nous lead­er­ship at the cen­tre.”

The Guyanese pres­i­dent in­vit­ed de­vel­op­ment banks, as­set man­agers, im­pact in­vestors, and sov­er­eign wealth funds to join the al­liance “be­cause fi­nanc­ing na­ture is not char­i­ty—it is in­sur­ance.”

Just be­fore lunch on day one of the sum­mit, heads of gov­ern­ment from the Cari­com re­gion, in­clud­ing Mot­t­ley, Gon­salves and Ali sat along­side mem­bers of the pri­vate sec­tor and the en­er­gy sec­tor and signed on­to the al­liance.

Mot­t­ley would re­act to the ICJ’s ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion in her ad­dress. She said, “Be­yond its le­gal oblig­a­tions that it es­tab­lish­es through this ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion it sends the sig­nal of what is moral­ly right for the world to do in terms of the set­tle­ment of pol­i­cy. I start here be­cause for us this has nev­er been an is­sue. It is our lived re­al­i­ty.”

The Bar­ba­dos prime min­is­ter said is­sues of sav­ing the plan­et could not be ad­dressed with­out ad­dress­ing the is­sues of cli­mate and bio­di­ver­si­ty and pol­lu­tion all at the same time. “Those of us who live this re­al­i­ty in the re­gion have come to un­der­stand that while we will ar­gue strong­ly in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, we must act even stronger lo­cal­ly,” she added.

To­day, the sum­mit will take a more tech­ni­cal tone with the clos­ing ple­nary set for 4.40 pm.