Pacific development banks navigating access to climate finance

A new paper from the Pacific Community’s (SPC) Climate Finance Unit responds to gaps in recent global analyses including the Green Climate Fund’s (GCF) Independent Evaluation Unit (IEU) Access Report, which reflect limited reference to Pacific experience. This paper revisits the global climate finance landscape by placing Pacific voices at the centre of the climate finance narrative.

The paper titled Steering our own va‘a: Pacific lessons in accessing climate finance draws on a first-of-its-kind talanoa among five Pacific Development Banks, Fiji Development Bank (FDB), FSM Development Bank, (FSMDB), Bank of the Cook Islands, Development Bank of Samoa and Tonga Development Bank.

Convened through the Pacific Development Banks Learning Exchange hosted by FDB and facilitated by SPC, the paper documents the lived realities of institutions navigating the GCF’s accreditation requirements and project development processes.

It reveals a story that is both deeply technical and profoundly human. Pacific institutions are not struggling because they lack capacity; they are navigating requirements and systems that were never designed with small island contexts in mind.