Climate Finance Fundamentals 12: Climate Finance Regional Briefing - Small Island Developing States

The Small Island Developing States (SIDS) together bear next to no responsibility for climate change, but their geographical, socioeconomic and climate profiles make them particularly vulnerable to its impacts with many suffering already from devastating losses and damages due to extreme climate events. Spread across three regions, the 40 SIDS nations have 464 projects approvals totalling USD 2.5 billion from multilateral climate funds between 2003 and 2022.1 While approved funding for the SIDS has increased markedly in the past few years, it fulfils only a small part of actual needs. Since 2015, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) has been the largest contributor to SIDS. In 2022, USD 173 million was approved for projects in SIDS. Some 57% of this is programmed by the GCF, which also accounts for the 12 largest projects in SIDS. Further scaling up of both climate adaptation and mitigation finance to the SIDS is vital – both to address the vulnerability of SIDS inhabitants by making agriculture, biodiversity and infrastructure sectors more resilient to climate impacts, and to shift the energy mixes of SIDS away from fossil fuels. At the same time, SIDS are on the forefront of effort to establish funding arrangements for addressing loss and damage, including with a dedicated Loss and Damage Fund under the UNFCCC.