November 8, 2022.
Kimberly Ramkhalawan
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley is calling for a loss and damage fund to be established by wealthy nations if they are to attempt at putting their words into action in mitigating the effects of global climate change.
Her address at the World Leaders Summit during this year’s COP 27 event currently ongoing in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, was once again directed at the World Bank for their inability to assist provide concessional funding to small island developing states as those in the Caribbean, especially following catastrophic natural disasters continue to wreak havoc in the region.
Her comments before some of the world’s most powerful leaders come even as Hurricane Lisa devastated fellow CARICOM state, Belize, and widespread flooding affected crops and livelihoods on the island of St Lucia.
She questioned the world leaders gathered in Egypt “How many more must speak before those of us who have the global capacity to instruct our directors at the World Bank, how many more countries must falter particularly in a world that is suffering the consequences of war and inflation, and countries are unable to meet the challenges of finding the necessary resources to finance their way to net zero”.
The Barbados PM says the current world still looks like the ‘imperialistic empire’, where the “global north borrows between interest rates of one to four percent, while the global south borrows at 14 percent”.
To Mottley, all it requires is a “simple political will to not just come here and make promises, but to make a definable difference in the lives of the people they have a responsibility to serve seems not to be capable of being produced”. She put forward the question of “How much and how many more must happen?”
She added her country too held “high ambition, but not able to deliver on it, because the global industrial strategy has fault lines in it”, as their “ability to access electric cars or batteries or photovoltaic panels were constrained by those countries that have a dominant presence and can produce for themselves, but the global south remains at the mercy of the global north on these issues”.
Her solution, the establishment of a Climate Mitigation Trust that unlocks $5T from private sector savings, where leaders summon the will to use the Special Drawing Rights,(SDRs) in a way that unlocks the private sector capital. However, she says that requires a change of attitude.
Noting that there is no way developmental countries can move forward without concessional financing, she says it is “critical the issue of loss and damage be addressed and called the talk must come to an end”.
However, it was not all cast and blame, the Barbados PM commended countries such as Denmark, Belgium and Scotland for their own modest ways in trying to accept the precepts of loss and damage as critical and as morally just.
But for loss and damage to work, it can’t only be an issue of asking state parties to do the right things, although they must, but believes the non-state actors and the stakeholders, the oil and gas companies, and those who facilitate them need to be brought into a special congregation between now and COP 28. Mottley says it was unfair “that companies make $200B in profits in the last three months and not be expected to contribute at least 10 cents on every dollar in profit to a loss and damage fund”. Describing what a loss and damage fund looks like, and who can access it, the Barbados PM called for the convening of a special convocation that not only involves state parties, but non state actors, such as the same companies, She further told the giants of the financial world, that it was “time a natural disaster and pandemic clauses in our debt instruments”. Mottley explained these natural disaster clauses working by unlocking 18 percent of the GDP over the next two years, effectively putting a pause on all its debt toward the end of two years to be paid back, with the flexibility within the first two years to address the issues of damage and loss”.
But it was her hit on the Bretton Woods system once again she took umbrage with, calling for reform at multi-lateral development banks. She says this came to be and still existed during a time when a majority of the countries present did not exist at the time the Bretton Woods Institution was formed.
Therefore we have not been seen, nor heard sufficiently and if we are there to rise to the occasion, to play our part to stop the tragic lost of life that we have seen, and the impact of livelihoods that we are feeling across the countries, then there needs to be a new deal, with respect to the Bretton Woods institution.
She says amendments at the IMF level requires 85 percent to change the current agreement, with the US having 17 percent of the quota, then it cannot be done without its congress, and calls for a commitment to unlocking concessional funding to climate vulnerable countries, as there is no way developing countries who have graduated can fight this battle without access to such funding.
This year, the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – COP27 is themed “Delivering for people and the planet”. As a result, Heads of State, ministers, and negotiators, along with climate activists, mayors, civil society representatives and CEOs are meeting in the Egyptian coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh for the largest annual gathering on climate action, during the period November 6-18.