(Reuters) – The Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF) will invest more than $2 billion annually totaling $15 billion until 2030 in Latin America to fight climate change, the bank announced on Saturday at the U.N. COP28 climate summit in Dubai.
The funds will be used to improve infrastructure, water supply, food security, emergency response, disaster mitigation through monitoring and prevention systems. It will also finance other projects including erosion control and coastal protection.
“This financing reinforces CAF’s commitment to promote actions to adapt to climate change and to achieve greater resilience in communities in the face of natural disasters and extreme climate events,” Alicia Montalvo, manager of Climate Action and Positive Biodiversity at CAF, said in the statement.
CAF noted that hurricanes represent 97% of disasters in the Caribbean, affecting almost three out of every four Latin Americans and Caribbean people.
In the Andean region, floods constitute 63.6% of disasters, and are responsible for 82% of human and material losses.
Landslides account for 23% of disasters, according to the report and droughts also affect several countries in the region, impacting production
Caracas-based CAF is a major lender for infrastructure and development projects in the region. It is made up of 20 countries from Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as Spain, Portugal and 13 Latin American private banks.
(Report by Deisy Buitrago in Caracas; Writing by Alexander Villegas; editing by Diane Craft)
