Long-term, low greenhouse gas emission development strategies provide a beneficial space for Least Developed Countries to set out a visionary blueprint for a resilient, decarbonised future, compatible with limiting warming to 1.5oC.  

Meeting climate goals is becoming a matter of fundamental concern for many countries. For the most vulnerable countries, meeting global mitigation targets to limit the increase in global warming to below 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels is a matter of survival - because of their limited financial, technical, technological and human capacity to cope with increasing and more frequent climate-related adverse events. This analysis takes stock of the resources mobilised through funding proposals submitted to and approved by the Green Climate Fund over the period from November 2015 to July 2021 (Board 29). It is based on data published by the GCF.  

Small island developing states are currently faced with two significant challenges that are more onerous due to limited financial resources: adapting to increasing climate change risk and recovering from the pandemic. Debt-for-climate swaps provide an avenue for SIDS to address these challenges.  

This study aims at analysing the employment implications of Antigua and Barbuda transitioning to a low carbon economy and discussing the various social dimensions of a ‘Just Transition’, with a focus on electricity and road transport. This report assesses the employment impacts for a scenario derived based on the current draft NDC targets compared to a Business-as-Usual Scenario, with a focus on road transport and the electricity sector.  

This briefing outlines why long-term strategies are a fundamental component of national climate policy architecture, and how SIDS can benefit from developing one, both directly in terms of prioritising efforts for achieving the Paris Agreement goals, and indirectly through synergies with other sustainable development and resilience goals. While we focus here on the energy sector – the largest source of emissions for SIDS – an effective LTS should consider all sectors, as well as the interlinkages between them.  

In this work, through GIS mapping of all Caribbean islands, the potential for near-coastal deep-water as a resource for ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is shown, and these results are coupled with an estimate of the countries for which OTEC would be most advantageous due to a lack of other dispatchable renewable power options. Secondly, hourly data have been utilised to explicitly show the trade-offs between battery storage needs and dispatchable renewable sources such as OTEC in 100% renewable electricity systems, both in technological and economic terms. Finally, the utility of near-shore, open-cycle OTEC with accompanying desalination is shown to enable a higher penetration of renewable energy and lead to lower system levelised costs than those of a conventional fossil fuel system.  

From household-level choices through to national adaptation planning, people across the Pacific make critical decisions that are sensitive to climate change. In order to make the best possible decisions, they need the best possible information in a usable form. Yet, information is rarely tailored to user needs, meaning that only a small proportion of the available knowledge is reflected in decision-making. It is becoming increasingly evident that knowledge brokering can help. This briefing note looks at what the process of knowledge brokering is, and how it can be supported in the Pacific region.