Small islands being disadvantaged

Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has taken serious issue with the treatment meted out by the international world to small island nations like those within the Caribbean, particularly in terms of climate and disaster risks, contending that our nations, despite our inherent vulnerabilities, continue to be severely disadvantaged.

She was delivering the keynote address on Monday evening at the opening ceremony of the Understanding Risk (UR) Caribbean Conference, which was held at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. PM Mottley told the large gathering, including representatives of regional governments, disaster risk management experts and players in the insurance industry among others, that while countries have individual responsibilities to move from risk to resilience and to make the requisite changes to practices and laws to promote such, the international community too has a role to play. She made the point while referring to this region’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, which she noted is as “negligible as our capacity to destroy global trade in goods and services”.

“I use that deliberately as the reference point because for more than 25 years, this little region has tried to advance a simple argument for special and differential treatment with respect to our international trade obligations that has been largely unsuccessful, because we have been invisible and disposable for most persons. The bottom line is, for more than 25 years we have literally tried to sustain an argument against a one-size-fits-all prescription and that recognises that the inability to distort global trade in goods and services ought to matter, because there is a disproportionate consequence to enterprises within our region, who in many instances were forced either to shut down production or to become marginalised because of the removal of non-tariff barriers and the reduction of tariffs as a result of our becoming signatory to the WTO [World Trade Organisation] and participating in a global trading bloc, that was intended to bring sustainable development and progress to people,” she said.

With that in mind, PM Mottley indicated that if the region has been unsuccessful for all those decades, she wonders how triumphant we are likely to be in the climate change fight. She made the point while noting that Caribbean countries remain on the “frontline of a war we did not start, nor do we sustain”. As such, referencing the vulnerabilities of our countries, she hinted at the challenges countries in the region face in accessing concessional financing because of the ranking they receive based on the gross domestic product (GDP), contending that this needs to change.
“…The continued belief that countries can be graduated on the basis of middle income status purely on GDP, and precluded from access to critical funding to be able to modernise their infrastructure in the face of inherent vulnerability, has really to become a historic topic rather than a fight that we are continuing to wage on a daily basis.”

She added, “I’m not even going in at this stage, to the extent that politics has been allowed – global politics and power relations have been allowed to literally creep in to the determination as to who can benefit and who shall not benefit. The battle is being waged not at the level of the technocrats or the management of international organisations, but is being waged regrettably at the level of capitals.”

Adamant that this is unsustainable, PM Mottley said we have, if we really want to make progress against the “battles” that cause tremendous risks, and become resilient, we need to start doing things differently. Moreover, she said we must recognise that failure to act is for the most part because persons do not believe that the problem is important enough to guarantee action, or to require it.

“You ask yourself on what basis can there be a sustainable platform for international cooperation and development if the very right to life and the very right to sustainable nature, to sustaining our societies is not accepted as a perquisite for action. I hope that your gathering here will help continue the process of being able to change minds and hearts and not to build the action, for the foundation is action is not with us,” she contended.

Mottley added that there is need for a moral and ethical discussion worldwide on topics of climate and disaster risks. She argued that only when moral and ethical leadership is given at both the national and international levels, will there be courage to fight such battles.

“Until such time, it is a form of idle entertainment for those who choose to watch,” she stated.

She added, “I say so, not intending to shock, nor not intending to be rude. But I say so conscious that with every hurricane, the place of choice for those who don’t go to shelters is a bathroom. I say so conscious that for every meeting I make in September or October, I know that there is a risk or a likelihood of cancelation because we do not know what could befall us within 72 hours. I say so conscious that irrespective of whatever else you have to say about Haiti, it has not received 20 per cent of the pledges pledged to it in the post-earthquake environment.”

In that vein, she maintained that if the region is to benefit there must be domestic and international political will, for without that, we would just become “a footnote in the history of mankind”. (JRT)