Pacific Islands Forum approves the implementation of redesigned Pacific Resilience Facility which will be presented at the Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting in Cook Islands this November for a formal approval and adoption.
The facility was one of the initiatives approved by the forum finance ministers during their two-day meeting in Suva.
Speaking on the initiatives, Cook Islands Prime Minister and PIF chair Mark Brown said the facility was first proposed more than six years ago as a means for attracting donor funding or government funding into a specific Pacific design vehicle so that financing can fit the climate priorities of our countries.

He said the countries in the Pacific had over the years faced challenges when attempting to access a number of avenues for financing climate initiatives, such as the Green Climate Fund and other sources of financing.
“Pacific countries, for a number of years, have voiced their concerns at the difficulty of accessing climate finances so what we have done over the last few years and in particular in the last year and 18 months, is redesigned this proposal for a Pacific Resilience Facility that will be targeted to develop partners to put their funds into and used for Pacific adaptation measures, specifically for Pacific countries,” Mr Brown said.

“And we see this as one way to enable funds to be freed up quicker to our members in the Pacific countries to address climate funding and resilience building initiatives which in many cases can be quite small scale and thereby make it difficult to fund when we do those through the formal channels with the likes of the Green Climate Fund.

“So, there is no funding in this pool other than the commitments that have been made by the US of $2million to help stand up this particular facility and also commitment by Australia for a further additional $2 to $3m to get the facility stood up,” Mr Brown said.
He added that once the facility was completed and endorsed by Pacific leaders in November, the facility would be taken out the facility to develop a process.

Story By: Ashna Kumar

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