Mottley calls for international rules to deal with climate change
UNITED NATIONS ( CMC) — Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley Wednesday reiterated a call for an international rules-based order to help small island developing states (SIDS) deal with the impact of climate change.
Addressing the Leaders’ Session on Climate and the Just Transition convened by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Mottley said the request is clear from SIDS regarding the international rules-based order “in order for us to succeed.
“Indeed, it is would not be possible for us to be able to offset the negative consequences of the climate crisis without this,” she said, adding “we are conscious that there are divergent views that we currently face in 2025 that were not as apparent a few years ago.
“And in the context of that, we are reminded that we have, therefore, to find common solidarity. Indeed. Pope Francis, as we mourn his loss, reminded us in his encyclical letter that to see that obstructionist attitudes, even on the part of believers, can range from denial of the problem to indifference, nonchalance, resignation or blind confidence and technical solutions, whatever it is.”
Mottley, the current chair of the 15-member Caribbean Community (Caricom) grouping, told the international conference that the reality is that the climate is not stopping, “and the reality is that our people are on the front line of this and it triggers other crises, as the secretary general said.
“We have to be clear, therefore, as to what is possible. We need to redouble our efforts at the national and regional levels with respect to our indices and with respect to the financing, including, as we see in the Bridgetown Initiative, expanding the options for domestic resource mobilisation.”
The Bridgetown Initiative, named for the capital city of Barbados, where the initiative originates, is a call for urgent and decisive action to reform the international financial architecture (IFA), which was designed at a time when most of today’s member states were not independent and when climate risks or social inequalities, including gender equality, were not considered pre-eminent development challenges.
These and other issues have become increasingly at odds with the reality and needs of the current world, making the IFA entirely unfit for purpose in a world characterised by unrelenting climate change, increasing systemic risks, extreme inequality, highly integrated financial markets vulnerable to cross-border contagion, and dramatic demographics, technological, economic, and geopolitical changes.
While Barbados continues to play a leading role, it is not an initiative of Barbados alone, but rather a coalition of partners in a movement for global change.
Mottley, the only person from the Caribbean region to address the conference that heard addresses from Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Emmanuel Macron of France, said that SIDS also face the problem of having to deal with high insurance rates because what is uninsurable is an investment in this modern financial system.
She said: “At the same time, we need to recognise that we have not come anywhere close to being able to get the behavioural changes at the individual level, particularly in areas where there is water scarcity or where there are floods, and where actions can be taken to be able to bring greater resilience and adaptation at the individual level, at the local level, at the state level, and of course, at the national and regional levels.”
Mottley said that at the same time, at the international level, there is need for a “simple mechanism which will allow us to maintain… greater solidarity and a greater sharing of experiences beyond access to financing.
“I want to be able to put a challenge that I really do believe that we ought to set a challenge for a 20 to 40 methane-free world and if we can do that…it will advance our causes significantly. This will allow us to find common purpose with the fossil fuel people, without them having to become believers,” she said.
Mottley told the conference that there is need to advance the common objective of saving the planet, continuing research and making it possible that everyone will benefit.
“But we have to buy time recognising that methane lasts in the environment for only 12 years and recognising that if we can use the satellite technology that shows us all the methane leaks, work to be able to change agricultural practices and waste management practices, then we can see significant changes with respect to this entire battle for mitigation, but at the same time, continuing to force the change of behaviour and the access to finance and domestically and internationally for adaptation.
“I pray that we can recognise that we don’t always see history move in a singular, vertical way, but we can, however, keep the trajectory that we have. We will not always have everybody moving at the same pace at the same time.”
