Barbados must strengthen the data and reporting systems that support its climate commitments to show results in its quest to secure international climate finance, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Environment Santia Bradshaw has said.

As agencies involved in environmental protection gathered for a workshop and consultation to strengthen institutional and technical capacity, Bradshaw called for greater transparency to meet requirements of the Paris Agreement, the legally binding international treaty on climate change.

“Put simply, what we cannot measure and what we cannot properly manage and what we cannot demonstrate, we will find increasingly difficult to finance,” Bradshaw told the inception workshop and first round of formal consultations for the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Capacity Building Initiative for Transparency (CBIT) project.