Bridgetown, Barbados (Commonwealth Union)_’ Who will get up and stand up for the rights of our people?” stated an impassioned Mia Mottley, who for decades has been fighting against climate change, pollution, and environmental degradation. Borrowing the lyrics of reggae legend Bob Marley, Mottley who was named the Champion of Earth for Policy Leadership is standing up for her country and the ravages it is seeing due to climate change. It is Mottley, who pulls some hard punches when it comes to fighting climate change and who has placed Barbados as a frontrunner in the world’s environmental movement.
But Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, one of the Caribbean’s most vulnerable nations to climate change seeing major and more frequent hurricanes, rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and major flooding, is not about to allow climate change to mow her down. In 2022, she unveiled The Bridgetown Initiative, a plan to reform the financing of poor countries by wealthier countries in climate crises. Her aim is to transform the development finance system for improved climate adaptation and resilience in emerging economies. Into this net, funding agencies like the IMF and the World Bank will have to radically change the way they work.
Emphasizing that time is running out in the world’s battle to maintain temperatures below the 1.5C threshold, The Bridgetown Initiative aims to free billions or probably trillions for poorer countries to cope with the impacts of climate change. She estimates at least USD 1.5 trillion is needed for the plan to come to fruition.
Stressing that the world cannot move away from the fact that it is facing a massive climate crisis, Mottley called for urgent action which she said needed commitment from both public and private investment. Very blunt and forthright, she held leaders from across the world listening to her at the World Economic Forum in China accountable for the plight of nations like hers. She said that unless the world realizes that the fires of climate change will consume the entire world if not put out and takes responsibility for the predicament facing of all nations, facilitating flows of capital, which she equated to the oxygen needed for climate action, are absolutely critical.
The Bridgetown Initiative, named after the Barbados capital, aims to mitigate the debt crisis faced by emerging economies and expand multilateral lending by at least USD 1 trillion. Mottley points out that the plan gives the solution to make meaningful progress, focusing on finance which has a tangible output as the disparity in the pricing of capital between the global north and global south is significant.
Mottley, the co-chair of the Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance became the first female leader of Barbados since independence in 1966, when she was voted in 2018 with more than 70 percent of the popular vote.
