Civ­il so­ci­ety lead­ers with­in the Caribbean say their role in the cli­mate fight must not be di­min­ished, and crit­i­cal cli­mate fi­nance must trick­le down to grass­roots or­gan­i­sa­tions.

On the eve of the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS4), Cli­mate An­a­lyt­ics Caribbean Di­rec­tor, Ruean­na Haynes, called for greater ac­cess to cli­mate fi­nance for com­mu­ni­ty groups, grass­roots or­gan­i­sa­tions and aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions. “When you’re deal­ing with the in­te­gra­tion of the so­cial en­vi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic, the most ef­fec­tive place to deal with it is as close to the is­sues as pos­si­ble,” Haynes told Guardian Me­dia.

While civ­il so­ci­ety groups are present in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da for SIDS4, sev­er­al groups Guardian Me­dia spoke to are hope­ful such ac­cess will come post-SIDS4.

Omar Mo­hammed, who is the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of The Crop­per Foun­da­tion, which is a mem­ber of the Caribbean Cli­mate Jus­tice Al­liance, said most of the cli­mate change ini­tia­tives in places like T&T are led by civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Mo­hammed said, “It’s in­ter­est­ing to note that most of the ac­tu­al prac­ti­cal lo­cal ac­tiv­i­ties that find their way in­to gov­ern­ment re­ports on na­tion­al adap­ta­tion ac­tiv­i­ties, mit­i­ga­tion ac­tiv­i­ties are, in fact, be­ing im­ple­ment­ed by civ­il so­ci­ety.”

He em­pha­sised the lo­cal mit­i­ga­tion ef­forts are very spe­cif­ic. “If you are look­ing at the adap­ta­tion of a coastal com­mu­ni­ty ver­sus a com­mu­ni­ty in and around a for­est, those mit­i­ga­tion, those adap­ta­tion needs could be very dif­fer­ent, and in most cas­es, these lo­cal civ­il so­ci­ety groups are the best placed to trans­late those needs in­to ef­fec­tive ac­tion,” he said.

Mo­hammed added that cli­mate fi­nanc­ing through en­ti­ties like the Green Cli­mate Fund and the Adap­ta­tion Fund is gen­er­al­ly chan­nelled through State en­ti­ties and they are “ex­ceed­ing­ly com­plex.”

He would like to see civ­il so­ci­ety en­gaged at two lev­els, one at the na­tion­al lev­el where a space is cre­at­ed for mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion. Then, at the project de­vel­op­ment lev­el where ac­cess to fi­nance is key. He said mean­ing­ful­ly en­gag­ing civ­il so­ci­ety who is do­ing adap­ta­tion work in those com­mu­ni­ties is need­ed to en­sure it is de­signed prop­er­ly from the start.

Mean­while, the founder of the Fondes Aman­des Com­mu­ni­ty Reaf­foresta­tion Project, Ak­i­lah Jaramo­gi, said there should be a dif­fer­ent meet­ing that speaks di­rect­ly to civ­il so­ci­ety groups.

“I would like to see the fi­nan­cial com­mu­ni­ty clear­ly defin­ing ar­eas in which they are will­ing to help, and this is in terms of grants, not even loans, be­cause civ­il so­ci­ety groups are not in a po­si­tion to re­pay loans,” Jaramo­gi said.

She went fur­ther in say­ing civ­il so­ci­ety groups are un­der-rep­re­sent­ed around the ta­bles where de­ci­sions are be­ing made. “This is some­thing we need to ad­dress. There is noth­ing about us with­out us. Gov­ern­ments need to know that,” she stat­ed.

Se­nior Re­search Fel­low, at the UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, Dr Preeya Mo­han, said cli­mate fi­nance flow­ing in­to aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions is al­so crit­i­cal as it cre­ates a more in­formed and en­gaged cit­i­zen­ry. She added, “Ac­cess to cli­mate fi­nance can em­pow­er aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions like The UWI in the cli­mate fight. Fund­ing can sup­port our vi­tal re­search. Re­sources can be used to de­vel­op ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes on cli­mate change for stu­dents, com­mu­ni­ties, and pol­i­cy­mak­ers such as our MSc in Cli­mate Stud­ies.”

Such funds, Mo­han said, can al­so be di­rect­ed to­wards col­lab­o­ra­tive projects with lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties, fos­ter­ing knowl­edge ex­change and de­vel­op­ing so­lu­tions that ad­dress spe­cif­ic re­gion­al needs.

SIDS4 wrapped up on Wednes­day in An­tigua.