BARBADOS AND OTHER countries financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) are getting help to link their investments to climate goals.
This followed an IDB decision to approve the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) Pipeline Accelerator Multi-Donor Trust Fund (ACL). This is a new instrument to increase support for enhancing the planning, design and preparation of infrastructure projects and portfolios.
The ACL will help countries in Latin America and the Caribbean align public and private-sector investments with their national commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement (referred to as NDCs) and sustainable development objectives. The ACL has been initially funded with €10 million from the Nordic Development Fund (NDF).
The ACL, the second component of the recently launched IDB Group’s NDC Invest platform, will focus on supporting public and private partners throughout the project cycle, with an emphasis on upstream policies and planning and other pre-investment activities to integrate sustainability into project design and assessments.
It will cover the additional costs associated with ensuring that projects are planned, designed and executed to be sustainable – in terms of low-carbon emissions and climate resilience, in addition to other social, fiscal and environmental sustainability objectives.
Among other key activities, the ACL will finance studies or action plans to incorporate sustainability in procurement practices; detailed engineering designs, climate risk assessments, resilience integration plans, and feasibility studies of technologies or financing schemes for sustainable projects or portfolios; and application of pilot approaches, tools, and sustainability standards.
“Enhanced support mechanisms are an important foundation for efforts to increase the sustainability of investments,” said Bernardo Guillamón, manager of the IDB’s Office of Outreach and Partnerships. “NDF’s partnership in this space is essential to facilitating the identification and planning of bankable projects, and will help to mobilise financial resources from global markets for advancing NDCs.”
The new instrument forms part of the IDB Group’s strategy to help fund investment to fill the region’s sustainable infrastructure gap. (SC/PR)
