Mia Mottley

Posted by on November 14, 2022 in Black lives matter, Blog, climate change, Dame designate, Environment, feminism, Human rights, Politics | 2 comments

Mia Mottley/https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98020326

It is too early to say whether the Cop27 meetings being held in Sharm-el-Sheikh will be viewed as a turning point in the fight against climate change, or yet another failed opportunity.

If the collective decision is that real steps have been achieved and credits are due, history will acknowledge the input of one woman who will be remembered for the clarity of her words and, more importantly, her proposals regarding the finance needed for the developing world to manage the damage climate change is already causing.

Meet Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados since 2018. She is also the leader of the Barbados Labour party and the first woman to hold either position. She is also Barbados’s first prime minister under its republican system, following constitutional changes she introduced which abolished the country’s constitutional monarchy.  Just saying…

She has been in Barbadian politics for most of her adult life, holding various offices before becoming Prime Minister. In 2022 she became the first Barbadian to appear on the front cover of Time Magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential People’ expressly for her outspoken advocacy for addressing climate change.

In September 2021 she addressed the UN General Assembly, threw away her script and instead gave a passionate speech in which she called for global moral leadership in the fight against climate change, economic and technological inequality, racism and unfair distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. It is therefore not surprising that her address to Cop27 on November 7th of this year was delivered in a similar vein. In a blistering attack she criticised industrialised nations for failing the developing world on the climate crisis.

However, to accompany her criticism Mottley has also brought to the table a concrete initiative to provide new means of finance to the developing world. She is working with Emmanuel Macron, President of France on this; dubbed the ‘Bridgetown Initiative’, which refers to the capital of Barbados, it calls for development banks to issue $1 trillion in low-interest loans for climate spending in developing countries. The idea is increasingly gaining traction with the World Bank and IMF; US climate envoy John Kerry said reforms at the IMF and World Bank to provide far more capital for climate finance in developing countries ‘can be done.’

Within the Bridgetown Initiative, the money raised from taxing oil companies’ profits would be classified as loss and damage funding, while the other finance streams would go toward climate mitigation and adaptation.

I will leave you with an extract from Mottley’s speech at Cop27:

‘We were the ones whose blood, sweat and tears financed the industrial revolution. Are we now to face double jeopardy by having to pay the cost as a result of those greenhouse gases from the industrial revolution? That is fundamentally unfair.

We need to have a different approach, to allow grant-funded reconstruction grants going forward, in those countries that suffer from disaster. Unless that happens, we are going to see an increase in climate refugees. We know that by 2050, the world’s 21 million climate refugees today will become 1 billion.’

We all need to watch this space.

2 Comments

  1. Mia Mottley is certainly a formidable character and the Bridgetown Initiative sounds like a practical solution.
    We need to hear more from such an impressive lady.

    As you say Barbara, we must watch this space.
    Another fascinating article.
    Many thanks.

    • Thanks Joyce. It is so good to hear of viable solutions gaining traction at last!

      Dame B

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