Prime Minister Philip Brave Davis yesterday called on developed countries to increase their resources for climate change adaptation, reduce loss and damage, and ensure that countries like the Bahamas can quickly access these funds without red tape excessive.

He made the statement at the Summit of Leaders of Small Island Developing States on Climate Change, held during the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2024 (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan.

“We implore bilateral and multilateral partners to increase their resources for adaptation and loss and damage, and to ensure that SIDS can access these funds at scale, quickly, without excessive and costly bureaucracy, and under form of grants,” Davis said.

“Justice demands it. It is unacceptable that Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are bearing the brunt of a climate crisis that we did not and are not contributing to.

Davis said SIDS spent 18 times more on debt repayments than they received in climate finance.

He said the annual cost of disaster damage averages eight percent of SIDS’ total gross domestic product (GDP), without taking into account the growing need for adaptation or the growing number of losses and losses. damage.

“Justice demands that the polluter pays, not those who bear the burden of pollution,” Davis said, calling for 70% of climate change funding to be dedicated to adaptation.

“It is not a request but a necessity. Adaptation is our right – our right to prepare, to protect, to persist.

“Moreover, the loss and damage fund must become an immediate relief tool and not a maze of administrative formalities. Bureaucratic delays are an injustice to all communities who are exposed and unprepared.

“We are not looking for favors; we seek fairness. If we are to bear the consequences of a crisis that we did not cause, we must at least have the support necessary to deal with it.”

At another COP29 event yesterday, Davis said that with global temperatures exceeding the internationally accepted warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the world was “dangerously close to a line beyond which there is no return.”

He said developed countries, which are responsible for 80 percent of global emissions, can lower global temperatures if they act dramatically and decisively.

The Prime Minister said The Bahamas is doing its part to combat global emissions by preserving and protecting seagrass forests, which are estimated to absorb more carbon than the Amazon rainforest; continue the transition to renewable energy sources; and continue to pioneer the use of blue carbon credits to support the international climate finance architecture.

He said The Bahamas is deeply concerned that some countries are now “systematically seeking to erase” core provisions of the Paris Agreement that provide SIDS access to climate finance.

“These arrangements now need to be fully implemented as a matter of urgency, along with other funding commitments made previously,” Davis said.

The Prime Minister, who has made climate change his priority, has repeatedly called for an increase in climate financing.

In September, while giving a speech at Climate Week in New York, he called for more money to be added to the global loss and damage fund.

At COP27, countries agreed to create a fund to help developing countries recover from natural disasters caused by climate change. Some $800 million has been pledged for the fund, a sum Davis previously called “a pittance.”

Last month, the director of climate change in the Prime Minister’s Office (OPM), Rochelle Newbold, said Bahamian officials and others planned to emphasize the need at COP29 for developed countries to contribute 1 .1 trillion dollars per year to the loss and damage fund.