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Jun 21, 2025
Developing countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region are turning ambition into impactful action.
From building resilience in countries like Dominica, Grenada, and Saint Lucia in the Caribbean to advancing sustainable land management in Brazil, Mexico, and Peru in Latin America, these countries are demonstrating what focused investment planning paired with CIF catalytic finance can deliver. Under our Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) and our Forest Investment Program (FIP), CIF’s concessional finance has lowered risk, crowded in co-financing, and turned pilots into scalable platforms for systemic change.
Resilience building among vulnerable SIDS
The Caribbean is home to some of the world’s most vulnerable small island developing states (SIDS). CIF finance benefited more than 3 million people across the region with $167 million in PPCR investments, strengthening national systems to respond to disaster shocks.
In Saint Lucia, financing supported governance reforms in the water sector.
In Grenada, CIF supported the delivery of more resilient coastal roads designed to withstand storm surges and landslides.
And, in Jamaica, solar-powered agro-processing hubs created green jobs in rural communities while reducing emissions.
In 2024, CIF hosted a workshop that looked back at the regional investment plan of six PPCR partner countries, including Dominica, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Besides taking stock, it was also an opportunity to draw out lessons and share knowledge that builds capacity among partner countries. This is how Dominica’s Cozier Frederick, Minister for Environment, Rural Modernization, Kalinago Upliftment, and Constituency Empowerment, explained the spirit of the meeting:
“We spoke about building the first climate-resilient country. Dominica is sort of a petri dish of what small island states are,” explained the Minister during an interview. “This knowledge can be shared. There's a lot we can offer to humanity, to the world.”
Investing in Forestry
Further south, CIF’s concessional finance serves to protect and conserve forests while empowering the people who steward them. About 853,000 people benefited from $216 million in CIF investments under FIP and mobilized an additional $758 million in funding in the LAC region. Through these investments, almost 30 million hectares are now under sustainable land management, with improved land use policies to address the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation.
In Brazil, CIF financing helped more than 6,000 rural producers, nearly half of them women, adopt low-carbon, sustainable farming practices across the Cerrado biome. FIP supported improved land management of 26.9 million hectares of land – about the land area of New Zealand.
In Mexico, CIF helped establish one of the first national forest monitoring systems under the United Nations forestry mechanism, REDD+, opening the door for the country to access performance-based payments.
In Peru, it supported the recognition of over 3 million hectares of Indigenous territory, essential for durable conservation and equitable finance.
In Guatemala, CIF-supported agroforestry models are showing how restoring degraded land can go hand in hand with strengthening smallholder livelihoods. Read an independent mid-term evaluation of CIF’s forestry portfolio and the lessons we learned from LAC and other regions.
CIF’s role goes beyond its first mover finance and partnership with countries that are most vulnerable to storm surges and cyclones, droughts, and floods. We also have an established learning mandate that ensures our future investments build on the lessons we draw from program design to delivery. What we learned from FIP, and the countries that implemented their programs, is informing our Nature, People, and Climate Program. What we learn from PPCR and its over $1 billion in investments, will help CIF and its partners build on its success and feed into a new upcoming resilience program, the Accelerating Resilience Investments and Innovations for Sustainable Economies (ARISE) Program.
* From June 23 to 26, 2025, the Government of Jamaica, Climate Investment Funds (CIF), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the World Bank Group are set to host a high-level forum aimed at facilitating learning in resilience building and harnessing nature to boost development.
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