Powerful countries dragging feet on climate change action

Barbados continues to feel the effects of climate change even though its carbon emissions are among the lowest in the world.

And just as she did at the opening of yesterday’s COP 26 summit, Prime Minister Mia Mottley Tuesday pleaded with the world’s most powerful nations to address the situation before it was too late.

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on the sidelines of the COP26 Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Mottley said despite Barbados’ small carbon footprint the country was on the frontline of climate change.

“To begin with, we have a serious problem with water. We have had effectively drought-like conditions for the better part of the last few years where almost half the island is at risk of getting adequate water.

“Secondly, we have an impact with respect to our coral reefs. A lot of the marine life that we saw as children is no longer there. Thirdly, we have the possibility and we are seeing it already, of saltwater intrusion into some of our aquifers making the water situation more dire. And then, we have the sargassum seaweed as well on the East Coast of most of our countries from the very south in the region to the Gulf of Mexico and this affects people who have restaurants or hotels because the smell is toxic,” Mottley said.

“And you have not heard me say floods or hurricanes and those are the other ones as well. This year Barbados had its first hurricane in 66 years and before that, we had a freak storm that had 46,000 lightning strikes in 90 minutes.”

The Prime Minister said it was important for some of the larger countries to take stock of what was going on.

She said the fact that they were not being affected by climate change was the driving force behind their lethargy in taking decisive action.

“I think people are getting there. The problem is that those who need to make the decisions are kicking the can down the road and they believe that they can because they’re not seeing us, they’re seeing themselves and for them, they don’t reach that period of peril probably for another 15-20 years,” Mottley pointed out.

“If I had more time I would have said code red to China, to the US, to Europe, to India, to all of the countries who are not just the traditional emitters but also the new ones. Part of the difficulty is that the new emitters argue that the traditional emitters have the largest stock, but whether it is the largest stock or the smallest stock we are literally like the ground when elephants fight, we get trampled and that is exactly what is happening now. We really hope that the message will go forth and that’s why I said that I hope their populations, their people will tell them that they need to act now and not later.

“They are waiting for it to hit them and we really are hoping that their conscience will be pricked and that they recognize that no one is safe until everyone is safe and if the episode with the vaccines hasn’t shown us that, then we will never learn,” she maintained.