PM: Do what it takes to halt climate change

Prime Minister Mia Mottley continuing an unofficial speaking tour to press the world community to take action against climate change, said in Geneva the world must be prepared to make decisions and apply the resources necessary to halt and reverse climate change.

At a keynote speech at the International Trade Centre’s Trade for Sustainable Development Forum, Mottley told her audience that the world must not begin to believe that it is a victim of climate change.

She declared: “I do not accept that it is beyond human ingenuity.

“But it is a subject of priorities and in the same way that we prioritize spending in other areas, we can prioritize spending if it really mattered or if we believed it was urgent enough.

“At the same time, we need to recognize that when countries are forced to borrow with limited fiscal space already, they then are victims of an international capital market that will render negative judgments on their credit rating, such that they then are in a vicious cycle that they cannot get out of.

“Do we spend the money on retrofitting or building new roofs, building reefs to protect coastal economies or do we spent the money on being able to complete the process in health care and education for the stabilization of populations?”

Noting that the Caribbean was on the frontline of climate change Mottley warned its development opportunities were being stolen because of its absolute necessity to fight the phenomenon.

She added that it was critical that the voices of non-state actors and citizens across the world, including young people, join the fight because climate change would not only affect coral islands but coastal cities eventually.

But Mottley also suggested that climate change presented opportunities not mere doom and gloom.

She said: “The question for us is, can we work to force the world to deal with this with a sense of urgency such that we are not the collateral damage of an insensitive and procrastinating global community?”

She noted that the Climate Action Summit, as outlined at the United Nations two weeks ago, had left the world divided.

The Prime Minister said that when funds to fight climate change were created, countries such as Barbados, The Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago could not access them because of their middle income status.