Regional fund needed to build climate resilience across Caribbean – BoG Governor

As the Caribbean continues to explore more ways to build climate resiliency, Governor of the Bank of Guyana (BoG), Dr Gobind Ganga, believes that it is more cost-effective and efficient to have a regional fund rather than individual countries pursuing their own financing mechanisms to build long-term resilience.
“There is need for a regional fund. Currently, I believe there are two or three countries that are doing their own; that is very expensive. It is not a resilience for the future. It is trying to build insurance for your own,” Dr Ganga said while speaking on a panel about financing future resilience across the Caribbean.
Noting that the Region has not been actively taking steps to finance its future resilience, the BoG Governor pointed to the V20 Group, which comprises climate-vulnerable countries from around the world that developed a collective lifeline fund of US$1 billion – something which he says demonstrates the benefits of a coordinated approach.
According to the Central Bank head, while some countries in the Caribbean are pursuing their own financing mechanisms, this approach is costly and inefficient.
“What is being done in individual countries? Some of them have been putting out green bonds, [and] some have been putting out blue bonds. We find quite a lot of people are trying to raise funds, but…the funds are for individual countries, and it’s very expensive.”
“If it is being done for the Caribbean, it would be cheaper and less work. We have to have the capacity also to do it. Regionally, it’s easier and it is far better in terms of the scopes that we need to look at. So, I believe that while we need to raise funds, it needs to be done in a manner which is very efficient, cost-effective and it spreads across the Region, so it has to be regional,” Dr Ganga contended.

Reactive culture
He went on to highlight the need for the Region to also move away from a reactive culture to one of anticipation when it comes to disaster management. This, he pointed out, requires not just financing but other aspects in building out resilience.
“So, preparation is very important in terms of our culture and moving away from reactive to anticipation. The future is what we need to look at, and that is how you build resilience… Our capacity and our ability, the wherewithal to build resilience, comes from our partnerships, and that is what is important,” the Central Bank Governor posited.
Dr Ganga was, at the time, sharing the stage with Vice President of Corporate Services at the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Gillian Charles-Gollop, during Tuesday’s panel.
Charles-Gollop too underscored that collaboration, especially among regional institutions, is fundamental to the Region’s resiliency agenda.
“There is a big scale, and there’re lots of cost complexities in the challenge that we face, and that work that needs to be done exceeds the capacity of any single government, any single multilateral development or Private Sector bank or any organisation. And so, our progress and success will really depend on one stronger alignment across policy, finance, data, implement and community action.”
“It is really, really important for us to recognise that this is not a problem for one party to fix, one government to fix [or] one term to fix. We have to recognise we are all in this together, and we do need to represent and act together and plan for the future,” the CDB Vice President for Corporate Services emphasised.

Partnerships
Similarly stressing the need for partnerships was the Chief Operations Officer at the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility Segregated Portfolio Company (CCRIF SPC), Gillian Golah.
CCRIF SPC provides disaster risk financing products and services to member countries in the Caribbean and Central America region. Last year alone, the CCRIF SPC ceded some US$1.4 billion in coverage to members.
But as the organisation looks to expand its product offerings beyond just nations to sectors, utilities and microfinance, Golah says that there would be an increase in the insurance coverage – something that is already being witnessed.
“This year from June 1, it’s US$1.57 billion. That’s actually a very, very impressive figure, and we expect that to increase but has to increase within partnerships. It is really central [for] financing, resilience and planning. And influencing that discussion of covering risk is important because it means Public-Private Sector partnerships and donor interventions are more targeted, and it is through that targeted support that we can see more of the countries as well as the most vulnerable beginning to benefit more and more as we look into the next three to five years,” the CCRIF SPC official stated.
The panel discussion was held on Tuesday at the Pegasus Suites and Corporate Centre in Georgetown, where the 14th Caribbean Conference on Comprehensive Disaster Management (CDM14) was officially launched. The event is slated to be held in Guyana from December 7 to 12, 2026.