Barbados Ambassador to CARICOM David Comissiong is calling on Barbadians to be proud of and support the Bridgetown Initiative, which seeks to establish a Global Climate Mitigation Trust consisting of trillions of dollars to help poor countries tackle climate change issues and deal with immediate debt crises, Barbados Today reported on Saturday, March 4.
According to the World Economic Forum, the Bridgetown Initiative is a proposal to reform the world of development finance, particularly as it relates to how rich countries help poor countries cope with and adapt to climate change.
Barbados sets out three key steps in the initiative, the first involving changing some of the terms around how funding is loaned and repaid. The aim is to stop developing nations from spiraling into debt crisis when their borrowing is forced up by successive disasters like floods, droughts and storms.
Speaking on the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) “Mornin’ Barbados” show earlier in the week,
Comissiong declared that the initiative is the first serious proposal to suggest a way of finding the trillions in investment to prevent climate change from becoming a catastrophic problem.
“So, especially our young people, we need to become environmentalists. This needs to be the call of our young people and you have the Bridgetown Initiative, a homegrown instrument that you can embrace to become some of the world’s foremost advocates for dealing with climate change,” he said.
