The Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Cli­mate Change Cen­tre and the Cari­com De­vel­op­ment Fund (CDF), two sis­ter Cari­com in­sti­tu­tions have for­malised their co­op­er­a­tion via the re­cent sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU).

The short vir­tu­al sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny sig­nalled the start of deep­er com­mit­ments that the two agen­cies have said al­lows them to con­tin­ue de­liv­er­ing on their re­spec­tive man­dates to Cari­com while lever­ag­ing the part­ner­ship to im­prove cli­mate re­silien­cy in the re­gion.

Speak­ing at the sign­ing, Ro­d­i­nald Soomer, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the CDF, de­scribed the sign­ing as “time­ly,” es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the re­cent pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane El­sa on Bar­ba­dos.

“What I like about our agree­ment is the sim­plic­i­ty, the sharp fo­cus,” Soomer said.

“The MoU is re­flec­tive of our com­mon un­der­stand­ing of our re­spec­tive man­dates, and we have iden­ti­fied the ar­eas where they in­ter­sect, and where in our ex­e­cu­tion, our ac­tions can be com­ple­men­tary,” he al­so said.

The MoU fur­ther epit­o­mised one of the key ob­jec­tives of in­te­gra­tion which is “in work­ing to­geth­er, the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts,” Soomer said.

While the CDF has re­cent­ly de­vel­oped a fi­nanc­ing in­stru­ment that fa­cil­i­tates a struc­tured ap­proach to cli­mate mit­i­ga­tion through a cred­it risk abate­ment fa­cil­i­ty, the for­mal agree­ment will fo­cus more on cli­mate adap­ta­tion.

“Per­haps this rep­re­sents the biggest gap, in terms of the un­sat­is­fied needs of the re­gion,” Soomer added.

Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the cen­tre Dr Col­in Young agreed that the MoU can not on­ly as­sist in de­vel­op­ing re­spec­tive man­dates, but al­so lever­age the ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence of each of the in­sti­tu­tions to im­prove the qual­i­ty of lives as it re­lates to cli­mate change adap­ta­tion and re­silience.

“I be­lieve there will be nat­ur­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for us to work to­geth­er to con­tin­ue to lever­age pub­lic and pri­vate fi­nance to cre­ate long term sus­tain­able im­pact on the ground and in the lives of Caribbean peo­ple,” he said.

The MoU sets out the strate­gic ar­eas to guide col­lab­o­ra­tion in key ar­eas that in­clude pur­su­ing cli­mate change adap­ta­tion strate­gies in mem­ber states, main­stream­ing cli­mate-proofed de­vel­op­ment with­in Cari­com, pro­mot­ing cli­mate re­silient in­vest­ments in key sec­tors that in­clude coastal in­fra­struc­ture, wa­ter, coastal and ma­rine ecosys­tems, agri­cul­ture, health and tourism and de­vel­op­ing in­no­v­a­tive fi­nanc­ing mech­a­nisms to fos­ter growth and im­prove re­silience.