CPDC to campaign for debt relief for Caribbean countries

The Barbados-based Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC) is planning to build a case for debt relief and restructuring for countries in the region.

Richard Jones, Officer in Charge of CPDC, made the disclosure on Wednesday as he maintained that wealthy, heavily industrialised countries owe Small Island Developing States (SIDS) who are on the frontlines of the accelerating climate and debt crisis.

“CPDC aims to coordinate a Caribbean civil society, solutions-oriented regional policy and advocacy campaign to highlight and address the adverse effects of high debt levels, exacerbated by public health crises, climate change effects, and the historical development deficits caused by small and vulnerable developing states like Barbados and those in the Caribbean,” he said.

“CPDC, through this advocacy campaign, is aiming to build a case for Caribbean debt relief as a priority, and also restructuring of existing debt based on the region’s inherent climate and economic vulnerabilities.”

Speaking at the opening ceremony for the Barbados Association of Non-Governmental Organisations’ Caribbean Debt Workshop at United Nations House, he said the level of debt that currently hampers economic growth in SIDS is largely due to the colonial financial frameworks still found in smaller economies, particularly in the Caribbean.

“To delve into the debt and climate crisis facing the region and proper solutions on the way forward, we must understand the role history has played in influencing and promoting the systemic, historical, economic, oppression, which in part can account for the underdevelopment of the Caribbean region.

“We need to understand that the current structure of Caribbean economies was never designed to facilitate social and economic development…. Our economies were invented, structured and managed by our former colonial masters for one purpose – to achieve maximum wealth extraction to fuel and sustain their financial, commercial, and industrial transformation,” Jones stressed.

He pointed out that the Caribbean and other SIDS often bore the brunt of extreme weather and climate events although they were not major contributors to climate change.

“The climate crisis has been created by wealthy governments, institutions and private companies from colonial times to the present day, and yet it is us Small Island Developing States which are experiencing the worst impacts of the climate crisis,” Jones contended.

“Due to the global targets for zero-carbon energy systems and a green economy, Small Island Developing States are not in the position to develop using fossil fuel energy like wealthy countries did in the past.”

Contending that “there seems to be no reward for good behaviour in the debt and climate change discourse”, the CPDC official said that “wealthy, heavily polluting nations owe a climate debt to us, the Caribbean, and all other Small Island Developing States around the world”.

He said those countries have so far fallen well short of their commitments to compensate for the adverse impacts of climate change on small developing economies.

Minister of Labour Colin Jordan, meanwhile, agreed that there is a need to restructure the Bretton Woods Institutions – the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – to better address the financial needs of SIDS.

“Larger countries, developed countries, live a different reality, and the institutions that in some cases we have become beholden to, are in urgent need of reform,” he said. “I am happy to say that our Prime Minister has been in the vanguard really, in the forefront of calling for an overhaul of the Bretton Woods Institutions.” (SB)