Latest news with #MiaMottley
Time Magazine
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley on Building Bridges Toward a Better Climate Future
Barbados may be a small country in size and population, but Prime Minister Mia Mottley has seen that the Caribbean nation plays a big role in the fight against the climate crisis. In her speech at the 2025 TIME Earth Awards in Manhattan on April 23, Mottley pointed to the late Pope Francis, who 'remained forthright in stating what was necessary for us at the personal level, but also the level of the planet Earth: we have to work to save the planet.' 'He said clearly that we need a conversation which includes everyone, not some of us, but everyone, since the environmental challenge that we are undergoing and its human roots concern and affect us all.' Mottley, who became the first female Prime Minister of Barbados in 2018, isn't afraid to pave the way. She has implemented a plan to phase out fossil fuels and transition to 100% renewable energy by 2030. Mottley is clear about the contentious political climate that affects environmental action. 'We are at an awkward stage in the world's development,' Mottley said. 'When you hear companies and financial institutions that a year ago were still promoting the importance of climate finance all of a sudden say they don't need it and they don't believe in it anymore, you begin to wonder if this is real.' But she's also clear-eyed about what's at stake, including the fact that the historically largest polluters are often the richest nations yet don't bear the brunt of the climate crisis' impacts. Rather, less developed countries in the Global South, like Barbados, which faces rising sea levels and more frequent storms, often do. Mottley launched the Bridgetown Initiative at COP26 in 2021, as a plan to push rich countries to support developing nations in adapting to climate change by aiming to mobilize trillions of dollars in green investments. 'If we don't get this equation correct, it is going to destabilize our access to food and water, our access to security,' she said. Part of the key, she said, is in finding the 'love language' that makes conversations between opposing sides—climate activists and climate deniers—possible. 'We're not going to win all the battles in the current geopolitical climate, but we can win a battle where there is common purpose.' Mottley implored businesses and individuals to eschew apathy and indifference—and for world leaders to join in on the conversation around the climate crisis, regardless of political differences. 'The truth is that if we look back at history, we know that history doesn't move in a straight line, but it is important that we keep the trajectory and the direction moving in the right way,' Mottley said. 'There are people whose very existence depends on us finding ways of building bridges through this difficult and challenging time.'
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mia Mottley Accepts 2025 TIME Earth Award
Mia Mottley on Sept. 27, 2024. Credit - Li Rui—Xinhua/Getty Images Barbados may be a small country in size and population, but Prime Minister Mia Mottley has seen that the Caribbean nation plays a big role in the fight against the climate crisis. In her speech at the 2025 TIME Earth Awards in Manhattan on April 23, Mottley pointed to the late Pope Francis, who 'remained forthright in stating what was necessary for us at the personal level, but also the level of the planet Earth: we have to work to save the planet.' 'He said clearly that we need a conversation which includes everyone, not some of us, but everyone, since the environmental challenge that we are undergoing and its human roots concern and affect us all.' Mottley, who became the first female Prime Minister of Barbados in 2018, isn't afraid to pave the way. She has implemented a plan to phase out fossil fuels and transition to 100% renewable energy by 2030. Mottley is clear about the contentious political climate that affects environmental action. 'We are at an awkward stage in the world's development,' Mottley said. 'When you hear companies and financial institutions that a year ago were still promoting the importance of climate finance all of a sudden say they don't need it and they don't believe in it anymore, you begin to wonder if this is real.' But she's also clear-eyed about what's at stake, including the fact that the historically largest polluters are often the richest nations yet don't bear the brunt of the climate crisis' impacts. Rather, less developed countries in the Global South, like Barbados, which faces rising sea levels and more frequent storms, often do. Mottley launched the Bridgetown Initiative at COP26 in 2021, as a plan to push rich countries to support developing nations in adapting to climate change by aiming to mobilize trillions of dollars in green investments. 'If we don't get this equation correct, it is going to destabilize our access to food and water, our access to security,' she said. Part of the key, she said, is in finding the 'love language' that makes conversations between opposing sides—climate activists and climate deniers—possible. 'We're not going to win all the battles in the current geopolitical climate, but we can win a battle where there is common purpose.' Mottley implored businesses and individuals to eschew apathy and indifference—and for world leaders to join in on the conversation around the climate crisis, regardless of political differences. 'The truth is that if we look back at history, we know that history doesn't move in a straight line, but it is important that we keep the trajectory and the direction moving in the right way,' Mottley said. 'There are people whose very existence depends on us finding ways of building bridges through this difficult and challenging time.' TIME Earth Awards was presented by Official Timepiece Rolex and Galvanize Climate Solutions. Contact us at letters@
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why is No 10 tight-lipped about welcoming reparation campaigner?
It was back in February when the Telegraph, citing Caribbean sources, reported that the Foreign Office was to open talks on slavery reparations with Caribbean officials, who were demanding trillions of pounds from the UK in compensation for its role in the slave trade. In his piece, my colleague Craig Simpson reported that members of the Reparations Commission of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), a political grouping of 15 states who have led on calls for compensation from former colonial powers, were planning a visit to London in April with a specific aim to restate demands for payments. We were even told that the 'trip has been overseen by Mia Mottley, Barbados's prime minister,' who famously pushed for reparations to be on the agenda at the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit in Samoa last year. To say the demands are ambitious would be an understatement. In no conceivable way could the nation's taxpayers and its finances afford the bill. 'Ms Mottley has stated that Britain owes her country £3.9 trillion,' this paper had reported, 'while a 2023 report put the figure owed to former Caribbean colonies overall at £18 trillion.' A Foreign Office spokesman at that time had denied that there were any plans for a ministerial meeting, claiming no date had been set for a UK-Caricom meeting. Imagine my surprise then to come across a press release on 4th April - issued not by the Foreign Office but by No 10 - that Sir Keir had welcomed Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados to Downing Street that morning. When was this meeting scheduled, I asked the Downing Street Press Office. Were any payments to Barbados discussed at the meeting? My questions were refused, with the spokesman instead directing me back to the rather bare-boned press release, which would only provide the following information:'The leaders reflected on the strength of the relationship between the UK and Barbados, and the shared challenges faced by the two countries, including growth, climate change and global instability.'The Prime Minister also thanked Prime Minister Mottley for the action taken by Barbados against the Russian shadow fleet.'A standard news agency report on the meeting offered some interesting details.'We've known each other many, many years as good colleagues and now as leaders who work together, think alike', Sir Keir said of his guest, a fellow King's Counsel who was educated at the London School of her response, Ms Mottley said, '[w]e've had the opportunity to meet a number of times since you've assumed office.' We know that at least one of those times - at the Commonwealth Head of Governments summit - the matter of reparations has certainly been discussed. How many other discussions have there been on the subject, given Ms Mottley's focused, high profile and long-running campaign for compensation? There are other reasons to be wary of a ruinous bill being presented to Parliament as a fait accompli, much in the same way as the Mauritius payment, not the least because it is the same international judge from Jamaica who ruled against the UK on the Chagos Islands who has called for Britain to pay more than £18 trillion in reparations for slavery, declaring even that amount to be an 'underestimation' of the damage caused. While calls for reparations are longstanding, in recent years they have been reportedly gaining momentum worldwide, 'particularly among Caricom [of which Ms Mottley is the current Chair] and the African Union', whose joint theme for 2025 is 'Justice for Africans and the People of African Descent through reparations.' These organisations enjoy the support of both the European Union and the United Nations leadership - indeed, Ms Mottley is widely viewed as a potential candidate to succeed Antonio Guterres as the next UN secretary-general - who appear to be increasingly willing to entertain compensation claims. Speakers at a session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on African Descent in New York declared only yesterday that 'the calls for reparatory justice can no longer be ignored'. These calls at the Forum are being led by Ms Mottley's Caricom colleague, Dr Hilary Brown. International campaigners are also encouraged by what they view as a British government sympathetic to their cause after 14 years of Conservative-led refusal to discuss compensation claims. Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Attorney General Lord Hermer have both previously voiced their support for reparations, hitherto a political position only championed by edgier backbenchers such as Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Dawn Butler. While the Government has steadfastly refused to allow the word reparations to enter its formal communiqué, it has been more comfortable using expressions such as addressing 'wrongs of the past' when discussing payments to former colonies, as we've seen in the case of the Mauritius deal. In the case of Barbados and other Caribbean nations, if Ms Mottley is successful in her campaign, the bill presented to the taxpayer would likely be framed as payments towards the climate crisis, rather than reparations. But of course, reparation by any other name is still reparation. As, of course, is bankruptcy. Please share share examples of public spending in your personal and professional lives which you consider to be a waste of taxpayers' money. You can email us your stories – either in writing or as voice notes – at wastewatch@ Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Japan Times
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Japan Times
U.N. may get first female chief as Latin bloc unites
Latin American and Caribbean nations will seek to unite behind a single candidate in the contest to lead the United Nations, a decision that may put the global decision-making body on course to elect its first-ever female secretary general. Thirty out of 33 nations in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States agreed to seek a consensus candidate at their Wednesday leaders' summit in Honduras, according to government official familiar with the discussions. A joint statement signed by those nations will be published in the coming hours. It's a significant step for a region that is widely expected to produce the next U.N. chief when current Secretary General Antonio Guterres leaves at the end of 2026 after two terms in charge. The position informally rotates around the world's regions, and Latin America and the Caribbean are next in line. Forming that consensus, however, won't be easy. Argentina, Paraguay and Nicaragua didn't sign the document. And even as the letter doesn't explicitly say the countries will seek to back a female candidate, differing views of gender politics across the region, along with caution around choosing a candidate conservative governments may perceive as too far left, could push the talks in a different direction. Guterres has indicated that he would like the 15-member U.N. Security Council, which elects the secretary-general, to choose a woman as his successor. It's a desire shared by Brazil — Latin America's largest nation — which has already begun pushing its neighbors to come together behind a history-making pick. "We can contribute to restoring the credibility of the U.N. by electing the organization's first female secretary general,' President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a speech delivered at the summit. Mia Mottley at the COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November 2024 | Bloomberg Brazil is working for a female U.N. secretary-general, Ambassador Gisela Padovan, the secretary for Latin American and Caribbean affairs at Brazil's foreign ministry, told reporters last week. "There are candidates of political, intellectual and leadership weight, we know there are countries that have a slightly different view of gender issues but we will negotiate,' she said. Discussions are still in the early stages, but here's a look at four names that have circulated among regional diplomats as potential candidates for the role, according to three people familiar with the situation who requested anonymity to discuss it. Mia Mottley, Barbados Prime Minister The longtime leader of the Barbados Labor Party, Mia Mottley became the island nation's first female prime minister when she oversaw its landslide election victory in 2018. Mottley, 59, won re-election in 2022. On the world stage, she's become known as a champion of climate action: Earlier this year, she announced that Barbados has a plan to reach net zero emissions by 2035, a decade faster than Germany's ambitious plan. Mottley has also placed her nation at the forefront of innovative financial approaches to climate change, and has urged poor and developing nations to work together on solutions at a time when rich countries like the U.S. are pulling back. Mottley has also served as a co-chair of the Development Committee of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Michelle Bachelet, former Chile President Michelle Bachelet, 73, served as Chile's first female president from 2006-2010, then returned for a second stint as its leader from 2014-2018. A member of the Socialist Party who led a center-left coalition, she guided the South American nation through the aftermath of the sub-prime crisis, created government-financed pensions for the poor, provided more students access to free higher education and promoted women's rights. Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet | Bloomberg She has served in positions at the United Nations, including as its first Executive Director of U.N. Women, where she supported work on gender equality, and later became the U.N.'s High Commissioner for Human Rights. She was widely considered a contender in this year's Chilean presidential election before closing the door on a run in March. A trained doctor, Bachelet overcame intense hardship in her personal life. Her father was tortured and killed during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, while she was tortured and then exiled in Australia and East Germany. Rebeca Grynspan, former Costa Rica Vice President An economist who served as Costa Rica's second-in-command from 1994-1998, Rebeca Grynspan has held the position of U.N.'s secretary-general of trade and development. Grynspan, 69, is the first woman to hold that position, and has played a key role in talks between Russia and Ukraine over deals to keep hostilities from disrupting trade routes. Grynspan has previously held numerous other positions at the U.N.. She was its under-secretary general and the associate administration of the U.N. Development Program, and before that the director of the UNDP's Latin America and Caribbean bureau. Juan Manuel Santos, former Colombia President If there's no consensus around a female leader, Brazil could push for former Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos as the region's candidate, according to the people familiar with the situation. Santos, 73, held numerous ministerial roles before becoming Colombia's leader. In 2016, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a peace treaty between the government and the FARC guerrilla movement. But as Guterres and Brazil, Santos also proposed a woman to the job.
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Smaller Nations Push for Climate Progress—Without the U.S.
Mia Mottley, Barbados's prime minister, during the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington, D.C. Credit - Bloomberg—Getty Images Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley has become a leading champion of small economies in global climate discussions. And so I took note at last year's United Nations climate conference when she said she thought countries should engage then-President elect Trump to try to explain the importance of climate work. 'I am not one of those who will come out and say immediately that with the election of President Trump all is gloom and doom,' she said at a fireside chat last November. 'We need to find mechanisms… to have the conversations.' Mottley's position has evolved since then. Trump entered office in January with an aggressive agenda to attack clean energy and end collaboration on climate change. Last week, as delegates from around the world gathered in Barbados for a sustainable energy conference, Mottley instead insisted that small countries would need to find their own way forward. 'You don't spend time or energy praying over what could have been,' she said. 'But we deal with the world as it is.' Across three days of talks at the SEforAll Global Forum in Barbados, Trump barely came up explicitly. It's not that anyone there underestimated the consequences of his election for global climate progress. Rather, his election has finally sunk in, and attention has turned to paving a path forward—without the U.S. It's a telling glimpse at how climate discussions may be shifting. The gravitational pull of the U.S. should not be dismissed; some countries will inevitably follow his lead. Nonetheless, if the conversations in Barbados provide any indication, many emerging and developing economies remain eager to forge their own clean energy path. The U.S. shadow has always loomed large over international climate collaboration. As the world's largest economy and only superpower, climate negotiators had to adjust language carefully to respond to the U.S. political context. With the Paris Agreement in place, conversations have largely focused on finance—getting money flowing to energy transition projects, particularly in developing and emerging economies. But despite the central role the U.S. played in setting up the system, U.S. public money never came to represent the lifeblood of international climate finance—even as developing countries and climate advocates insisted that the country owed it to the rest of the world to pay up because of its historical emissions. Even in the climate-friendly Biden Administration, it took significant wrangling for the White House to commit to $11 billion in annual international climate finance. To put that in perspective, developing countries left last year's U.N. climate talks disappointed that their wealthier counterparts committed only to a total $300 billion in annual climate finance. In other words, on the finance front, the U.S. isn't leaving that big of a gap to fill. So where will the money come from? One key area under discussion at the SEforAll forum, where I spoke with officials in the public and private sectors based everywhere from Fiji to Sierra Leone, was so-called south-south collaboration. Instead of looking to the U.S. and Europe to pony up capital, developing and emerging market countries can work together—providing the goods and finance without the help of their wealthier counterparts. According to research from the Brookings Institution, trade between Global South countries recently surpassed trade between Global North countries. 'This is a great signal of progress,' Arancha González, a former foreign minister of Spain who is now the dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, told me on a panel I moderated at the forum. 'It tells us that there is a new world out there.' Potential sources of finance include development banks located in large emerging economies like Brazil and South Africa. Institutions like the New Development Bank, formed in 2014 by the BRICS nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, have financed billions in clean energy development. And, of course, it's impossible to talk about this financial picture without talking about China. The country's Belt and Road Initiative has been a source of more than $1 trillion in capital for infrastructure since its inception in 2013. In recent years, the country has increasingly focused its funding on green projects. Many developing countries have also focused on raising capital locally to fund projects—pushing savings and pension fund money to invest in the local market rather than looking abroad for higher returns. And then there are the new methods of what is often called blended finance. Traditionally, the term refers to a combination of public and private capital where the public money lowers the risk for private investors. More recently, philanthropy has entered the blended finance conversation, playing an increasingly important role providing money 'We have what we call strange bedfellows, where… institutional investors are partnering with a philanthropic organization, and together coming up with a blended finance solution that is innovative in approach,' says Ije Ikoku Okeke, who runs catalytic climate capital for the Global South at RMI, a clean energy non-profit. A right-wing populist might not object to this new dynamic. In such a world view, American money should support Americans—leaving other countries to their own devices. But is the U.S. really better off if the rest of the world builds a coalition with Americans on the sidelines? Putting U.S. strategic interests aside, it is a little refreshing to hear a conversation about clean energy in the Global South that doesn't get bogged down in whether the U.S. is going to live up to its moral responsibility as the world's biggest historic emitter and instead focuses on solutions. To get this story in your inbox, subscribe to the TIME CO2 Leadership Report newsletter here. TIME receives support for climate coverage from the Outrider Foundation. TIME is solely responsible for all content. Write to Justin Worland at
