RC Trebucq's Opening Remarks at the Signing Ceremony of the Letter of Intent between the UN and CDB

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

• President of the CDB, Dr. Hyginus 'Gene' Leon
• Members of the CDB Executive Team,
• Roberto Valent, Regional Director, UNDCO Latin America and the Caribbean
• My RC colleagues,

Good morning,

• I am honoured to participate in today’s signing ceremony, formalizing the shared commitment by the United Nations Development system in the English and Dutch Speaking Caribbean and the Caribbean Development Bank to work in close partnership towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
• On behalf of the wider UN Sub-Regional Team for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, as well as the Resident Coordinators for Jamaica, Belize, Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago and their Country Teams, I would like to extend my gratitude to the Caribbean Development Bank for our longstanding partnership for development in this region. To you ‘Gene’ and your Senior Management Team, I sincerely thank you for your commitment to strengthening our strategic partnership through signing this Letter of Intent.

Our region needs partnerships like this to make a difference in how it’s better equipped to address its multiple challenges: Climate change; low growth and economic resilience; limited fiscal space, debt and unequal access to financing; and people’s vulnerabilities. Together, we create a greater impact than the sum of our part as CDB and all UN entities for development. What should drive use, is the change we can help foster for more resilient, equitable and prosperous people’s lives.

This commitment comes at a critical juncture for the Caribbean. The war in Ukraine and COVID impact are producing a combined alarming cascading effect to the global economy in a region already on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Moreover, the triple crisis of food, energy and finance continues to affect people’s real lives. It threatens to further deepen inequalities and erode hard-earned development gains across the region.

This paints the picture of why together, we’re organizing a roundtable with Governments in the EC as soon as month-end to discuss both the ongoing response and important policy gaps to be addressed.

With only eight years left to achieve the SDGs in this context of multiple layers of crisis, it will be challenging and will require more from us. We can only make progress by working together through a comprehensive and synergetic response.

Our strong partnership on several issues over the past years, including the recovery after Hurricanes Irma and Maria and COVID-19 Response, among others have already shown that together, we’ve achieved more.

There are number of existing initiatives that we will use as catalyst, namely, the upcoming roundtable on the triple crisis, our collaboration through the Joint Programme on Innovative Finance or Blue Economy; and of course, our ongoing work to promote the Multi-Dimensional Vulnerability Index.

I’m therefore delighted to sign this LOI, taking our partnership to the next level under our respective UN-MSDCF and Strategic Plan for CDB.

This Letter of Intent is not just a piece of paper. It commits us to developing joint partnerships to address the issues most pertinent based on our comparative advantage.

These include:

• Economic diversification, including digitization, Blue Economy, regional trade and SMSE to support the region in economic diversification, and resilience in withstanding the effects of the triple crisis.
• Innovative finance, ensuring alignment between the 2030 Agenda and financial flows to the region
• Resilience, vulnerability, and climate finance to ensure better measures of vulnerability, while strengthening national resilience capacities, which are people centred and holistic
• Data and knowledge generation to collectively move the needle on data generation and use, to reach those furthest behind.

As I conclude, I would like to thank you again Gene and your Team for this big step forward. I re-iterate our commitment to operationalize this framework and to translate the broad commitments into a tangible workplan.  You can count on the support of the entire UN System to deliver as ONE (RCs, HoAs) as we seek to strengthen our partnerships and advance the SDGs in the Caribbean.

Thank you!