Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley speaking at a High-Level Dialogue on Climate Action in the Americas today. (PMO)

Barbados will call for a scaling up of finance for climate action at the upcoming 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26).

Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley today shared the country’s plans, as she addressed a High-Level Dialogue on Climate Action in the Americas, co-organised by the Governments of Argentina, Barbados, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Panama.

Ms. Mottley told her audience: “At COP26, in Glasgow this November, Barbados will be calling for a scaling up of finance for climate action to go beyond the $100 billion per year, so long promised and so not received. And we urge that climate capital should be constituted substantially by grants and loan terms favourable to the worst impacted countries.”

The Prime Minister noted that many small island developing states had no fiscal space because of having to fight the COVID-19 pandemic over the last 18 months and suggested that funding should be made available to them.

She continued: “I go further. The Alliance of Small Island States … constitute about 25 per cent of the states of the world. And we believe that, given that we are all on the frontline, with the existential crisis facing us that may well see some of our states not being able to survive, that there ought to be a disproportionate amount of that finance made available to these AOSIS countries.

“I am calling today for that limit to be at least 40 per cent, but with the mix as I said of grant and low interest funds, because it is only through the blended approach that we will not only be able to raise the money, but actually spend it.”

Ms. Mottley stressed that the most impacted countries must be given support, not as the “mendicant of the developing world”, but because their development prospects were being compromised and eroded by others.

She proffered the view that a multidimensional vulnerability index at best, or vulnerability criteria at worse, should be crafted, which took into account the susceptibilities residents of small island developing states face daily.

The world must limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, and as part of the Paris Agreement, countries agreed to a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).  

The Prime Minister said Barbados’ NDC was one of the most ambitious submitted to the Secretariat, as it sets the island “firmly” on a 1.5 degrees Celsius pathway.  However, she expressed disappointment that the submitted NDCs of some countries were above the 1.5 target.

sharon.austingill-moore@barbados.gov.bb

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