Pacific Regional Highlights
Climate Change
The Pacific region is particularly susceptible to the effects of climate change. MDF is ensuring that climate change risks and opportunities are factored into Pacific Regional’s sector and market selection, analysis, strategy development, intervention design and contracting. MDF used climate change risk assessments for the focus countries to inform proposed interventions throughout 2023.
Most support for climate change mitigation and adaptation within the Pacific Regional component was driven by interventions in the focus countries. However, there were also some climate-relevant interventions implemented in 2023 within the Regional workstream:
• Certification services present diverse opportunities to influence climate change mitigation and adaptation, because many certifications will directly or indirectly result in climate change mitigation and adaptation (e.g. organic production or carbon emissions) and reward compliant businesses with premium prices and better market access. • Digital financial services can assist with recovery from climate-linked natural hazards and disasters, enabling rapid and transparent financial transfers to vulnerable communities.
Inclusion
MDF continued to focus on understanding the different roles of men and women in markets and considered the potential to influence gender equality at the intervention design stage. For example, MDF’s intervention on credit risk scoring identified gender-based differences in loan applications that could influence lending decisions. Agricultural mechanisation can help women and people with disability via labour-saving technologies. New digital financial technologies can help people with limited mobility access services remotely.
