New bank

By Jenique Belgrave

Cabinet has approved a funding proposal for the creation of the Barbados Blue-Green Bank which will provide financing for the country’s climate mitigation project, strengthening the Roofs to Reefs resilience programme.

Minister of Home Affairs Wllfred Abrahams said the Blue-Green Bank’s funding proposal is to be presented to the Green Climate Fund’s (GCF) board in July. The GCF is a global fund dedicated to help fight climate change.

He noted that through a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) partnership with Barbados, BDS$10 million will be provided for the start-up operations of the Blue-Green Bank, with additional funds to come from the GCF and private parties.

In a press briefing in the Committee Room of the Parliament Buildings on Friday, Abrahams highlighted the critical work being done under the Roofs to Reefs programme, noting the importance of the funding being provided for the bank.

“The Roofs to Reefs programme is intended to capture all aspects of our resilience… We need when the rains are in, to be able to capture the rain so that in the dry season, we have sufficient water captured to be able to supply water to the country.

“We need to look at the fertilizers and pesticides that we use and how the run-off from those affect the coral reefs because if the reefs die, then it destroys that barrier to protect the land against the sea. So all of this we have spoken about, but we are now about to nail down some of the funding with Blue-Green Bank so that was a very important decision that was made in the last week,” he said.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Senator Dr. Shantal Munro-Knight called the bank “extremely innovative.”

“What it allows the government to do is to be able to harness private resources and investment from the market again to bring big projects to scale. We recognize that private finance necessarily cannot do it all. Government resources can’t do it all, but there is private capital that is significant and it’s going to be necessary for us to be able to address some of the fundamental challenges that we have in the context of building climate resilience. This allows us to do that in a very, very strategic way. The GCF will again provide some resources for us to be able to do that. The government will provide some resources, but the capital market will be targeted to provide the large bulk of that in order to be able to finance some of those projects,” she noted.

jeniquebelgrave@barbadostoday.bb