Pull Finance Facility for Climate Adaptation in the Caribbean
Helping governments, funders, and private sector actors turn proven climate adaptation technologies into solutions that can reach people and nature at scale.
Supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and implemented by CAF and Instiglio.
General Info
Pull Finance Facility for Climate Adaptation in the Caribbean
30 months Launched in 2025
Global Environment Facility (GEF), CAF, Instiglio, and participating governments
Latin America and The Caribbean (LAC)
Partners
Scaling Climate Adaptation Technologies Through Market-Shaping Solutions
Across the Caribbean, technologies already exist that can help communities, economies, and ecosystems adapt to a changing climate. Yet proven solutions often struggle to move beyond individual projects and reach the scale at which they can make a lasting difference.
The barrier is not simply a lack of innovation. High upfront costs, fragmented supply chains, uncertain demand, limited access to finance, and policy and regulatory gaps can prevent effective technologies from being adopted and sustained. For Small Island Developing States, these challenges are compounded by small and fragmented markets, geographic isolation, high exposure to climate risks, and limited fiscal space.
Too often, promising solutions therefore remain dependent on individual projects or grants. When that support ends, the market conditions needed to sustain adoption, attract providers, and continue expanding access may still not exist.
The Pull Finance Facility for Climate Adaptation in the Caribbean is designed to help change those conditions.
Supported by GEF and implemented by CAF and Instiglio, the Facility works with governments, funders, private sector actors, and other partners to identify the barriers preventing promising adaptation technologies from scaling and develop market-shaping solutions to overcome them.
The goal is to move proven technologies beyond isolated pilots and toward affordable, reliable, and scalable markets that can continue delivering adaptation and resilience benefits over time.
Proven Solutions Are Not Reaching Scale
Climate vulnerability is particularly acute across Caribbean Small Island Developing States. Communities, businesses, public systems, and natural ecosystems face growing pressures from hurricanes, drought, sea-level rise, coastal erosion, water insecurity, and other climate-related risks.
Technologies that can strengthen resilience are already available. Solutions ranging from water-efficient irrigation and distributed renewable energy to early-warning systems and coastal adaptation technologies are being developed and deployed around the world. But technical viability alone does not guarantee widespread adoption.
A solution may work and still struggle to reach the people and places that need it. Upfront costs may make it unaffordable. Demand may be too fragmented or uncertain for providers to enter the market. Distribution and maintenance networks may be weak. Financing may be unavailable. Regulations may discourage adoption. And providers may have too little certainty that investing in a new market will generate sufficient returns.
Traditional project-based funding can help deploy technologies in the short term, but it does not always address these underlying market barriers. This can leave promising solutions dependent on continued external support rather than creating the conditions for broader and more sustainable adoption.
The Facility starts from a different question:
What is preventing an effective adaptation solution from reaching scale, and what would need to change for the market to work better?
By starting with the barriers rather than a predetermined technology or financing instrument, the Facility can work with governments and partners to identify solutions suited to each country’s priorities, institutions, and market conditions.
How the Facility Works
The Facility combines market analysis, policy and regulatory support, pipeline development, and innovative financing to address the specific constraints preventing adaptation technologies from scaling.
One of its core tools is pull finance.
Traditional funding often pays for predetermined activities or inputs. Pull finance instead creates incentives around results. Funding is committed against clearly defined and verified outcomes, creating a stronger demand signal for providers while giving them greater flexibility to determine how best to achieve those outcomes.
This changes the equation for the market.
For private sector actors, a credible commitment to reward results can reduce uncertainty and make it more attractive to invest, innovate, enter new markets, or develop new delivery models. For governments and funders, payments tied to results can focus resources more directly on whether solutions are actually being adopted and delivering the intended outcomes.
Pull finance is not a single instrument. Depending on the market and the barrier being addressed, the Facility can combine results-based financing and other market-shaping approaches with complementary interventions to strengthen regulation, demand, supply chains, financing, or other enabling conditions.
From an adaptation priority to a functioning market.
- Identify the adaptation challenge
Start with country priorities and the climate risks affecting people, economies, public systems, and ecosystems. - Understand what is blocking adoption
Assess the relevant technologies and identify the financial, commercial, institutional, regulatory, or behavioral barriers preventing them from reaching scale. - Design the right market-shaping response
Determine which combination of financing, incentives, policy support, and other interventions could address those barriers. - Create incentives around verified results
Where appropriate, use pull finance to reward the outcomes the market needs to deliver rather than prescribing every activity required to achieve them. - Support implementation and learn
Work with governments, providers, funders, and other partners as mechanisms are launched, tested, and refined. - Build toward sustainable scale
Use the evidence and market response generated through implementation to strengthen the conditions for continued adoption and reduce dependence on one-off project funding over time.
Scaling Climate Adaptation Technologies Through Market-Shaping Solutions
The Facility brings together a set of complementary capabilities that can be tailored to the adaptation challenge and market conditions in each country.
Market and Technology Scoping
Identify priority adaptation challenges, assess relevant technologies, and determine where market-shaping approaches have the strongest potential to unlock greater adoption.
Market Barrier Analysis
Understand why promising technologies are not reaching scale, including constraints related to affordability, financing, demand, supply chains, awareness, incentives, regulation, and other enabling conditions.
Policy and Regulatory Advisory
Work with governments and partners to identify policy or regulatory barriers and strengthen the conditions that allow effective adaptation solutions and markets to develop.
Pull Finance and Results-Based Financing
Design mechanisms that create credible incentives around verified results, helping reduce uncertainty and encourage providers to invest, innovate, and deliver solutions suited to local needs.
Pipeline Development
Identify and assess opportunities based on their adaptation relevance, market potential, scalability, and ability to generate meaningful benefits for people and nature.
Project management and Strategic Support
Bring together the actors needed to move from opportunity to implementation, coordinate partnerships in-country, and provide strategic support as mechanisms are designed, launched, and refined.
Starting in the Caribbean, Built to Partner
The Facility is starting in The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic, working with governments and partners to identify priority adaptation challenges and the market-shaping opportunities with the greatest potential to address them.
Potential areas of application include:
Water resources, including technologies such as rainwater harvesting, water-quality monitoring, smart water meters, and other solutions that strengthen water security.
Climate-smart agriculture, including efficient irrigation, climate-resilient seeds, soil-moisture monitoring, and other technologies that can strengthen the resilience of agricultural production.
Energy security, including distributed renewable energy, energy storage, and microgrids that can strengthen resilience and continuity of essential services.
Disaster risk response, including early-warning systems, monitoring technologies, and other tools that help communities and institutions anticipate and respond to climate-related hazards.
Coastal adaptation, including nature-based solutions, coastal monitoring, mangrove conservation, and other approaches that can protect vulnerable ecosystems and communities.
These technologies are illustrative, not predetermined. Final priorities will be shaped by country needs, adaptation relevance, market potential, and engagement with governments and partners.
Interested in Partnering With the Facility?
Building functioning adaptation markets requires collaboration. The Facility is engaging governments, funders, technology providers, investors, implementing organizations, and other partners interested in overcoming the barriers that keep promising climate adaptation solutions from reaching scale.
Whether you are looking to address a priority adaptation challenge, bring an effective technology to a new market, support innovative climate financing, or contribute expertise to the development of the Facility, we would like to hear from you.
Get in touch: climatefacility@instiglio.org