The projects of adaptation before the effects of the climate crisis are key for developing and most vulnerable countries, such as Dominican Republic. However, for the purposes of financing These initiatives are usually seen in the international market as less profitable than those aimed at mitigation.
Given this panorama, secure funds that allow the development actions to deal with the impacts of the climate change constitutes one of the great challenges of the dominican delegation participating from November 11 to 22 in the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP29), in Baku, Azerbaijan.
“Everything that has to do with adaptation and resilience It is a priority for countries like Dominican Republicbut that requires financing. “Those are the discussions that are brought to the COP,” said Alan RamÃrez, facilitator of the NDC Partnership, an organization that helps countries achieve the Paris Agreement, to limit global warming, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). .
They are missing mechanisms innovative
Regarding the reason why these projects tend to be less considered, the director of Financial Mechanisms and Portfolio Management of the Ministry of the Environment, Iván Cruz, explained that “the funds and mechanisms existing ones prioritize projects mitigation, which are usually energy-based and are easier to implement; its results are seen instantly and you can have a return.”
He added that there is still a need mechanisms of greater innovation, since with initiatives that link aspects such as the regeneration of a beach or systems to adapt “I will not necessarily have a project of interest to the market or the bank.”
However, he clarified that there are projects of adaptation in which you can see profitabilitysuch as those related to agriculture climate smart or tourism sustainable.
The Vice Minister of Climate Change of the Environment, Ana Emilia Pimentelrecalled: “We are in a market economy; we must make it understood that being sustainable or being interested in the environment and biodiversity is profitable.”
Will they increase climate ambition?
One of the pillars of the also called “finance summit” is the call to increase the climate ambition through the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), which constitute the climate commitments that each nation assumes to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
The countries that signed the Paris Agreement in 2015 agreed to update these commitments before February 2025. Regarding the work in Dominican RepublicVice Minister Pimentel indicated that these new commitments “will give us a baseline on what we really need and what we should focus on.”
In that sense, he maintained that the Dominican commitments have ambitions with mitigation, however, “the priority is in the adaptation“. The authorities anticipate that the three or four documents that make up the new NDC will be ready before the date established in the 2015 agreement.
Other agenda items
Alan RamÃrez cited that, within the framework of the discussions at the COP, the agenda of the Caribbean country covers topics such as carbon market wave climate transparency “which is an issue that is always of concern, both to the agencies that finance it and to the United Nations Framework Convention itself, which requires that each country report on time and with credibility on its progress in its climate commitments.”
He added that another central issue is the way in which developed countries will have the capacity to react to events which are caused by the climate change and that affect the economies of the countries.
He argued that it must be determined how the mechanism of compensation established at COP28 in Dubai can help each country face these impacts. He recalled that the first fund was established in the United Arab Emirates “but it is insufficient.”
Impact of COP16
The conclusion of the Biodiversity Summit in Cali, without an agreement financing for nature, has been seen by experts as a “negative signal” that could have repercussions on climate and desertification summits due to “disagreements on the political and technical possibility of carrying out North-South transfers.”
When asked about this tenor, Vice Minister Ana Emilia Pimentel highlighted a more optimistic bet: “There was an issue of financing (…), but instead of a bad omen I think that at this summit of climate change “Yes, the topic is going to continue.”
“This COP is for financial and climate action, I am hopeful, especially for a country like ours, which needs all the financial support“he concluded.
