Time for reform

Prime Minister Mia Mottley is seeking support for a Bridgetown Agenda that Barbados has created to encourage reform of the Bretton Woods system, as she urged world leaders to remove the barriers to accessing financial assistance from multilateral development banks.

She also issued a stern warning to world leaders to honour their climate agreements, as she addressed the General Debate of the 77th United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York.

Mottley, who has been very vocal over the years in calling for a revamp of multilateral institutions, spoke extensively about the need to reform the aging global financial architecture to better reflect today’s realities, including making it easier for climate-stricken countries to access capital.

She contended that the Bretton Woods Agreement that gave rise to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) “no longer serve the purpose in the 21st century that they served in the 20th century”.

Against that background, the Prime Minister said she will be asking other nations to sign on to the Bridgetown Agenda as she continues to push for change.

“We had the good fortune of collecting, in Barbados, a large number of persons from civil society and academia at the beginning of August/end of July and we settled on what we have come to call the Bridgetown Agenda because we believe it to be a Bridgetown agenda for peace, a Bridgetown agenda for prosperity, a Bridgetown agenda inspired by love of humanity, and it is that agenda that speaks to the reform of the Bretton Woods architecture,” Mottley said.

“We’ve asked and will ask countries and people to join it because we believe that unless we take responsibility for ourselves, unless we accept that we are the world, we are not going to see a change.”

The Barbadian leader also urged countries to keep their promise to limit global temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees Celsius and net zero by 2050.

During last year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Paris, the G77 grouping – a bloc of 134 developing countries – pushed for the establishment of a loss and damage facility to support victims of climate-related disasters specifically for loss and damage.

Mottley congratulated Denmark for being the first country to pledge support to the loss and damage fund to the tune of US$13 million earlier this week, as she urged developed countries to play their part.

“The commitments of loss and damage are absolutely critical if we are to make serious progress in saving our world… the trust that is needed to propel us to fight the great causes of our time will not be won by breaching promises,” she said.

Painting a picture of the destruction associated with the climate crisis and pointing to the far-reaching effects, Mottley drew on the recent experience of Puerto Rico, which suffered catastrophic flooding and widespread damages from Hurricane Fiona earlier this week.

“The developing world, and in particular the small island developing states, came to Paris and agreed for a global compact. One of the key aspects of it that allowed us to do so was a promise of loss and damage. Today, the people of Guadeloupe and Puerto Rico, and yesterday [Wednesday] Turks and Caicos – and little do we know what will happen with Bermuda – face the difficulty of disruption by Hurricane Fiona,” she said.

She noted that the disruption was coming at a time when access to natural gas has already been affected by the war in Ukraine and the decision by Russia to cease supply to Europe.

“When we match this with the reality that we have not planned in granular form how we will have the capacity to meet the commitments that we have made for net zero – and I am a big defender of net zero, as you know – then I see trouble ahead of us and we must pause and get it right,” Mottley warned.

The Prime Minister also highlighted that while small states like Barbados have made net zero commitments, the current state of global affairs, including Atlantic hurricanes, the war in Ukraine, and the absence of financing, does not allow them to stop accessing their natural gas resources right now.

“….Natural gas has been viewed as a bridge to clean energy, but when the access to natural gas itself is also affected, you better understand why emerging markets in the Caribbean, including my own, and in Africa have determined that we cannot abandon access to our own natural gas resources until we are assured that we have the capacity to sustain our populations. This is where the rubber meets the ground,” contended Mottley.

Meanwhile, the Barbados leader supported a reform of the Security Council but said it had to be more than the composition of that UN body.

“We believe that a Security Council that retains the power of veto in the hands of a few will still lead us to war as we have seen this year, and therefore the reform cannot simply be in its composition but also [must include] the removal of that veto,” she said.

Among those also addressing today’s session was US President Joe Biden.

marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb