Not a single sugarcane farmer has received assistance from climate finance – Sugar Minister

Not a single sugarcane farmer in Fiji has directly accessed or received any assistance from climate finance and the injustice must end.

Minister for Sugar Industry Charan Jeath Singh highlighted this during a side event at COP29 and is calling for a transformation in global climate finance to ensure vulnerable communities, especially sugarcane farmers in Fiji, receive urgent support.

Singh outlined the reality faced by Fijian sugarcane farmers and rural communities, who continue to bear the brunt of climate change impacts without access to climate finance.

He further says not a single farmer in Fiji who has lost his or her sugarcane to a flood or a cyclone has been able to walk into a financial institution, present a proposal to fund farm-level recovery and adaptation have secure funding for it. Not one,” he said.

The Minister is also calling on the international communities to take bold action to ensure that decentralised climate finance flows directly to those in need.