BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – President of the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Daniel Best, says for the Caribbean region, climate finance isn’t just about development, it is existential.
CDB President, Daniel Best, addressing the three day 22nd annual meeting of the Independent Accountability Mechanisms Network (IAMNet).“The scale of financing we need to build resilience and recover from disasters is enormous. But here is the risk: as climate finance flows increase, so do opportunities for corruption. For CDB and our Borrowing Member Countries (BMC), this creates a double imperative.
“We must secure climate finance, and we must ensure it’s deployed with integrity. Any governance failures could jeopardise our access to future resources, access our region desperately needs. Strong accountability frameworks aren’t optional; they are prerequisites for survival,” Best told delegates attending the 22 nd annual meeting of the Independent Accountability Mechanisms Network (IAMNet).
The meeting, which ends on Thursday, has brought together accountability professionals from development finance institutions worldwide. It is being organised in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) Independent Consultation and Investigation Mechanism (MICI) and the Office of the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency.
Participants include representatives from the World Bank, IDB, IFC, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and other international finance institutions.
IAMNet was established to strengthen cooperation among independent accountability mechanisms and promote best practices in addressing complaints related to development projects. Member mechanisms provide platforms for communities and individuals affected by development projects to raise concerns about environmental and social harm.
In his address, Best told the conference that beyond climate vulnerability, the Caribbean is also exceptionally hazard-prone.
“Between hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and volcanic eruptions, our countries face catastrophe year after year. Given our susceptibility to natural disasters, we must ensure that when hazards strike, our response does no harm.
“Many of us are still scarred by what happened in one of our BMC after a natural hazard impact. Some of those sent to provide aid and assistance instead committed atrocious harm against the country’s citizens, including the most vulnerable.
“The accountability failures there were not administrative lapses, they were moral catastrophes that betrayed the fundamental trust upon which all humanitarian and development work depends. This is precisely the kind of failure that robust accountability mechanisms exist to prevent and address.”
Best said that the region is also facing severe economic challenges, noting that the small, open economies, massive debt burdens, and limited fiscal space leave regional countries with zero room for error.
“Every development dollar must count. There is no cushion for waste and no margin for corruption. When a project fails because of corruption or poor safeguards, that is not just a number on a report, it is a clinic that would not be built, teachers who would not be hired, young people who won’t get scholarships, roads that would not be constructed,” Best said, adding “in the Caribbean, accountability is not a luxury. It is survival”.
Best recalled that the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres had recently issued a stark warning that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are “alarmingly off track” describing the statement as “an emergency declaration.
“Less than 20 per cent of SDG targets will be achieved by 2030. Nearly half are moving too slowly. Eighteen per cent are actually regressing. Think about what that means, not in statistics, but in lives.
“Progress against poverty, inadequate. The fight against hunger, too slow. Climate action, grossly insufficient. Children waiting for schools that would not be built. People waiting for health services that would not come.”
Best said that this sobering reality is proof that ambition alone is not enough and that progress must be tracked, measured, and backed by accountability.
“No doubt this is why, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015, the resolution stated that “a robust, voluntary, effective, participatory, transparent and integrated follow-up and review framework will make a vital contribution to implementation and will help countries to maximise and track progress in implementing this Agenda in order to ensure that no one is left behind”.
He said the UN General Assembly understood that accountability mechanisms are not obstacles to the SDGs, but enablers.
“Regional and global mechanisms like yours act as force multipliers for national efforts. This is absolutely critical because the painful truth is that between 10 and 30 per cent of development resources leak away to corruption, to mismanagement, to non-compliance.
“And let me be clear about who pays the price: it’s always the vulnerable. The widow who can’t access support. The community displaced. The young person denied opportunity
That is unacceptable. And this is why your work, the work of Independent Accountability Mechanisms,is not peripheral to development. It is foundational”.
Best said that the true roles of the IAMs are the systems that make development work, adding that “development finance is built on trust. Governments trust us with their sovereignty. Communities trust us with their futures. Taxpayers trust us with their contributions. That trust is sacred.
“Hence…IAM professionals are the guardians of that trust. You ensure that resources reach the people who need them, projects do no harm, communities have a voice, and when things go wrong, those responsible must answer.
“But IAMs are more than compliance tools. They are vehicles for institutional learning. Complaints reveal gaps we can close. Investigations uncover systemic issues we can fix. Cases offer opportunities for improvement. Your efforts turn mistakes into course corrections.”
He said that the CDB’s commitment to accountability has been embedded “in who we are and how we work.
“Accountability, Integrity, and Transparency are among our core values. In 2015, we established our Office of Integrity, Compliance and Accountability (ICA) as an operationally independent office covering five functions: institutional integrity, ethics, accountability through our Projects Complaints Mechanism, compliance, and whistleblowing”.
Best told his IAMNet colleagues that they are not just accountability professionals, sang “you are guardians, guardians of trust, of resources, of promises made to real people. You are guardians of sustainable development itself, which means you are guardians of your fellow citizens.
“The next era of development finance will be defined not by the scale of resources we mobilise, but by the effectiveness of those resources in changing lives. You are central to that effectiveness.
“As we face the urgent reality of off-track SDGs, shrinking aid budgets, intensifying climate disasters, and rising public skepticism, accountability mechanisms offer the pathway to restore trust and drive results.
“Let us build a development finance system where every dollar reaches its intended purpose, every voice is valued, every institution learns continuously, and every community can hold us accountable. This is the infrastructure of trust. This is accountability as transformation. This is how we ensure that the people we serve can truly thrive,” he added.
