NEW York, New York – The Barbados government, faced with the financial fallout from the cost of living, debt and climate crises, has unveiled its “Bridgetown Agenda” as a guide for urgent and decisive transformation of the international financial system.
Prime Minister Mia Mottley speaking at the inaugural lecture in the Kofi Annan Lecture Series in New York (Photo courtesy PMO)Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley alluded to this charter and its benefits to the country’s development as she delivered the inaugural lecture in the Kofi Annan Lecture Series in New York.
She told the gathering that her administration had started “the exercise” of engaging civil society, academics, and some countries in the world and based on the shared experiences, a small list of priority areas was compiled that “are strategic and focused and that have, in our view, the rarity of being both achievable and meaningful”.
“We call it the Bridgetown Agenda because we asked people to come and join us there and to reflect on these things, so that we can see how we can make the world a better place. Not because Barbados has that power. We don’t, we are 166 square miles: But it is because we have that conscience and we feel the need to speak, even if others will call it a cry of conscience, and even if others will ask – who are they?
“We are simply ordinary people trying to make the world a better place and trying to appeal to those who actually have the power, so to do. Today, we remind them and we remind ourselves that it is unprecedented because we have a trifecta of connected crises.
“The cost-of-living crisis, stemming…partly from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the pandemic together, coming as they did, overlapping; and a developing country debt crisis, following the pandemic and climate related disasters….,” Mottley said.
She sought to remind the audience that tourism and travel dependent economies, such as Barbados came out of the first year of the pandemic with double digit economic declines “because the tourists simply could not come because of the shutdown.”
Mottley referred to the intense storms and hurricanes impacting countries around the world as the “the heart attacks of the climate crisis”. She also described droughts and Sargassum Seaweed as the “chronic NCDs of the climate crisis”, calling both “fatal”.
Mottley noted that the situation was compounded by tightening monetary policies in developed countries and the strengthening of the US dollar.
Noting that one in five countries today was experiencing fiscal and financial stress, she said if unaddressed, there would be deepening hardship, debt defaults, widening inequality, political upheaval and a delayed shift to a low-carbon world.
“We must act now, not next year or a year after. We cannot be good at rescuing banks, but not good at saving countries,” she stressed.
