Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo is urging Commonwealth nations to rethink how they approach climate finance and urban development, warning that current systems are not keeping pace with the scale and urgency of global challenges.
Jagdeo made the call during a Commonwealth roundtable on the Declaration on Sustainable Urbanisation, adopted in Kigali in 2022. The forum, supported by The King’s Foundation, brought together member states, experts and civil society organisations to examine strategies for managing rapid urbanisation while improving quality of life, boosting economic opportunity and strengthening climate resilience.
He pointed to the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub as a practical example of what coordinated action can achieve. The initiative, which emerged from work Jagdeo led and presented at the 2014 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo, has since mobilised nearly US$500 million in climate financing, supported more than 100 projects and deployed expert advisers across over 15 countries. The Hub is now headquartered in Mauritius.
Despite this progress, Jagdeo cautioned that significantly greater effort is needed.
“The progress of the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub is welcome and important. It shows what can be achieved when countries are given practical support to turn home-grown ideas into investable projects.
But the scale of today’s climate and development challenges requires far more.”
He stressed that developing countries, particularly small states, must be equipped with new tools and approaches to manage increasingly complex development demands.
“Helping all our people to secure better lives now requires managing complexity at a speed and scale not seen before.
We need new thinking, new tools, and a step change in how the international community supports developing countries and smaller states.”
The Vice President said discussions at the roundtable extended beyond urbanisation, highlighting a broader need for improved data systems and technological integration across all sectors of development.
Referencing insights from the recent AI Summit in New Delhi—where global leaders and major technology companies including Microsoft, Google and OpenAI participated—Jagdeo underscored the growing role of artificial intelligence in planning and decision-making.
He warned, however, that unequal access to data could widen global disparities if not addressed.
“If AI models are not trained on data from small and developing countries, it will not work for them.
So we must invest now—in solutions, both traditional and AI-driven—that support small countries and the developing world.”
Jagdeo added that the Commonwealth, representing roughly one-third of the global population, is uniquely positioned to lead in developing inclusive, scalable solutions that bridge the gap between climate ambition and practical implementation.