As Small Island Developing States across the Caribbean continue to grapple with worsening climate-driven disasters, a four-person official delegation from Antigua and Barbuda has traveled to Bridgetown, Barbados to take part in a high-stakes regional climate finance workshop. Running from May 28 to 29, 2026 at the Hilton Barbados Resort, the event titled “Prosperity on Our Terms: A Caribbean Agenda for Climate Finance Access and Addressing Loss and Damage” brings together dozens of representatives from climate-vulnerable nations across the Caribbean and the broader Global South.
Organized by the Climate Vulnerable Forum and the Vulnerable Twenty Group (CVF-V20), the workshop is hosted during Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s current tenure as CVF-V20 president. The Antigua and Barbuda delegation draws expertise from two key government branches: it includes Gita Nicholas and Arry Simon from the Department of Environment under the Ministry of Health and the Environment, alongside Carlon Knight and Sheneé Cornelius from the Ministry of Finance, Corporate Governance and Public-Private Partnerships.
For low-lying island nations like Antigua and Barbuda, the topics on the workshop’s agenda are not abstract policy discussions — they are urgent, existential priorities. Already, the country faces accelerating risks from tropical cyclones, coastal flooding, and chronic sea-level rise, all of which drain public resources and undermine long-term development. Improved, streamlined access to climate and disaster risk finance is therefore a core policy goal for the Antigua and Barbuda government, making this gathering a critical opportunity for engagement.
Over the two-day event, delegation members have taken part in targeted technical sessions covering a range of key financing mechanisms designed for vulnerable states. These include deep dives into the CVF-V20 Lifeline Fund, which delivers fast-acting liquidity support to nations immediately after major climate disasters strike. Attendees also explored the Vulnerability to Viability (V2V) Compact, a long-term framework created to tackle the structural financing barriers that hold back climate-vulnerable economies. Additional sessions covered the B20 Development Finance Institution Compact, a new collaboration with the OPEC Fund for International Development, as well as existing global Loss and Damage financing tools: the UN-established Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage and the Global Shield against Climate Risks.
On the second day of the workshop, May 29, the delegation will join a scheduled field visit to local climate adaptation and recovery project sites across Barbados. Stops include the Barbados Fisheries Division, coastal resilience sites at Paines Bay, and Six Men’s Bay. The on-site visit will give Antigua and Barbuda’s representatives first-hand insight into practical resilience interventions that can be adapted and applied to the country’s own climate planning and development frameworks.