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 already suffering from devastating losses and damages due to extreme climate events. Spread across three regions, the 39 SIDS nations have 500 projects approvals totalling USD 2.7 billion from multilateral climate funds between 2003 and 2023. 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 2023, USD 202 million was approved for projects in SIDS. Some 66% of this is programmed by the GCF, which also accounts for the 13 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 considered among the primary recipients of new funding efforts for addressing loss and damage, including through a dedicated new Loss and Damage Fund (LDF) under the UNFCCC operationalised at COP28, and in evolving broader funding arrangements.