COMPASS or Common Pool Asset Structuring System was presented and endorsed by Prime Minister of The Bahamas The Hon Philip Davis at the CHOGM24 side event Joining the Dots For Commonwealth Disaster Resilience.
COMPASS is a financial governance model that was co-developed as part of the project Their Time, Our Action, a collaborative research initiative between the Centre for Resilience and Sustainable Development (CRSD) at Cambridge, and the Commonwealth Secretariat.
COMPASS recognises that SIDS have significant strengths in cooperating internationally in order to make a change. It uses this principle to design a collaborative approach for SIDS to gain finance by proactively addressing the risks faced by SIDS, their investors and financial intermediaries such as banks. Through COMPASS, SIDS aims to build resilience and to avoid further debt.
Resilience played a central role in CHOGM24, whose theme was ‘One Resilient Common Future: Transforming our Common Wealth.’
Prime Minister of The Bahamas The Hon Philip Davis commented:
‘One of the greatest challenges to SIDs…is access to finance. The COMPASS arrangement seeks to ensure that smaller developing states like us are able to access finance and without that we’ll continue to be doomed to a cycle of recovery and debt.’
Outgoing Secretary-General Rt Hon Patricia Scotland, KC commented:
‘Today we are reaching across member countries, industries, public and private sectors to unite for disaster resilience.’
Dr Nazia Habib, founder of the University of Cambridge Centre for Resilience and Sustainable Development developed this framework in partnership with Outgoing Secretary General Rt Hon Patricia Scotland KC, Commonwealth. Their Time, Our Action has already secured $10 million private sector investment in digital training and health programs in the Caribbean (Commonwealth, 2022).
To learn more about COMPASS’s success read the Their Future Our Action final report. Stay informed about COMPASS by following this Linkedin page or check out the video from CHOGM above (discussion starts at 30min).
