Fiji looks to further reduce carbon footprint

FIJI intends to bring down its own carbon footprint by 30 per cent, despite being a negligible contributor. The Attorney-General and Minister responsible for Climate Change, Aiyaz SayedKhaiyum said even though Fiji, or even the whole of the Pacific island countries, contribute a negligible amount to global emissions, it also needs to show its commitments.

Speaking at the launch of the Fiji National Climate Finance Strategy at the Fiji National University’s Sports Complex in Nasinu this week, the A-G said for Fiji one of the measures will be having electric buses.

“I mean, we don’t want buses that climb up this small hill up in Kinoya to be emitting carbon dioxide. We would like to one day see electric buses just across the road,” he said.

The A-G said the Government was going to set up a Suburban Bus Terminal for these electric buses in the Valelevu grounds.

“These buses will actually run around the Nasinu area to be able to provide service to get into streets where buses currently don’t go into. One of the conditions of buses getting the license will be at least to start off, each one of them should have one electric bus,” he added.

He said they were working with organisations such as World Resource Institute to get Fiji into that space- “to be able to access finance to have those electric buses up and running” which, while costing money, will improve the quality of the lives of the Fijian people.

The A-G also gave an update on improving Fiji’s access to concessional financing.

“So we now have concessional financing from the World Bank and zero percent interest rate and 0.75 per cent is the service fee. The Asian Development Bank has since this year given us access to get concessional financing. The Japanese for example, now on a bilateral basis are recognising our vulnerability to climate change.”

He said Fiji was now getting finance under climate catastrophe funding at 0.01 per cent interest rate on a 40 year term with a 10 year grace period.

“This essentially means that you end up having at least 60 per cent of the loan that you borrowed as grant, which a lot of people talk about debt do not understand what they’re talking about.”

“So, these changes have taken place but as we have as a country have decided that we need to be able to be one step ahead of the ballgame.”