Climate Smart Acceleration of SDG 6 in the Caribbean and the Pacific Regions

A UN Water Conference 2023 Official Side Event 

2023 Conference Theme: Water for climate resilience and environment:  Source to sea

Date: 22 March 2023

Time: 11:00am - 12:15pm

Location: New York, New York, USA   

Background
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are faced with many challenges and constraints in pursuing sustainable development due to their ecological fragility and economic vulnerability[1]. The upcoming UN Water Conference provides a unique opportunity to highlight challenges and to explore, discuss and identify solutions for sustainable water management and the implementation of SDG 6.  It also provides a space to present SIDS leadership in addressing water and climate resilience, including innovative solutions that can be scaled.

Island economies and developing states need innovative mitigation and adaptation strategies and sustained investment of resources to realize the 2030 Agenda.  As such, islands and developing states’ economies and future developments must be predicated on proactive, sensible, and practical measures that seek to respond to this global challenge. Climate change adaptation, water management, ocean preservation and food security are major challenges requiring urgent attention and action by governments. To this end, island economies and developing states are both leading in and supporting one another in better preparing for the impacts of climate change. This is hardly surprising, as island economies and developing states are not passive victims, but rather leading on solutions, using amongst others, indigenous knowledge in water management.

Objective of the UN Water Side Event

This Official Side Event will offer an overview of Water Adaptation Strategies in islands and developing states; what still needs to be done, potential partners, models for taking action, and locally-driven solutions, financing mechanisms ,etc. Additionally, the event will discuss how to create and adapt financing mechanisms that can disburse funds for (pre-)agreed plans in order to reduce the risks and impact; financing for early adaptation and early warning communications and dissemination and knowledge exchange in translating these warnings into actions.

Partners include:

Governments of islands and developing states in the Caribbean and the Pacific, including: Grenada, Belize, Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire, St. Maarten, Saba, St. Eustatius, New Caledonia, and Samoa.

Organizational partners and organizers includeL Local 2030 Islands Network, Global Island Partnership - GLISPA, Global Water Partnership Caribbean - GWP-C , Caribbean Climate Smart Accelerator, International Platform for Deltas and Coastal Areas - IPDC, The Pacific Community - SPC, The Smithsonian Institute, Kolektivo, Global Water Partnership Organisation (GWPO), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Global Resilience Partnership (GRP), Aosis, and the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre

About the event

This session will explore the challenges and opportunities for sustainable water management, including trade-offs and risks, pathways to change and possible solutions. It will zoom in on the use of amongst other sustainable financing, knowledge sharing and partnerships, acceleration methodology and Fintech as a tool to finance sustainable adaptation strategies for water safety and security, discussing lessons and experiences from pioneering countries and ways in which financial schemes can be simplified and made more accessible. It will ultimately canvas ways to make investments in the water sector more integrated, transformative, and durable, to achieve sustainable development that works for all islands.

Focused on the nexus between islands, SDG 6, call to action/concrete action, this session will focus on:

• Adapting an Accelerator Program that could secure funding, partnerships, knowledge sharing, and growth of islands network related to water-based initiatives;

• Add Fintech as a tool to support islands access to financial support (carbon offsetting, impact credits, digitization and tokenization, regeneration);

• Support for SIDs achieving SDG Indicator 6.5.1 “Degree of integrated water resources management implementation (0-100)”

• The Local2030 Islands Network potentially announcing with leading members the launch of a Fourth Community of Practice on the Water-Food-Energy Nexus as a viable peer platform to actualize the above aims and priorities.

• Participating in the conference provides a great opportunity to work closely with each other.

Intended Outcome of the Side Event
The Water Action Agenda is the platform where all stakeholders can submit their commitments that will promote and facilitate that SDG 6 is achieved faster. This will be the main outcome of the conference. We can refer to the Water Action Agenda, by e.g. having as a goal that the outcome of the side-event is actionable - through knowledge sharing and concrete actions on water/climate that actually change something for islands.

PARTNERS