(Glasgow) The Prime Minister of Barbados on Monday launched a strong call to action at the Glasgow climate summit, stressing the existential threat to the most vulnerable countries for whom exceeding +1.5 ° C of warming would be a ” death sentence “.
“We want to exist in a hundred years, and if our existence means anything, then we must act in the interests of our people who depend on us,” Mia Mottley said to more than a hundred leaders gathered for the ceremony. opening of COP26.
“If we don’t, we will allow greed and selfishness to encourage our common destruction. ”
“For those who have eyes to see, ears to listen, and a heart to feel: to survive we need (to limit warming) to ‘1.5 ° C; 2 ° C would be a death sentence for the populations of Antigua and Barbuda, Maldives, Fiji, Kenya or Mozambique, Samoa and Barbados ”, she insisted.
“We don’t want this death sentence and we have come here to say ‘redouble your efforts, redouble your efforts’. Because our people, the climate army, the world, the planet, need action now, not next year or the next decade. ”
In particular, she criticized the promise, still unfulfilled by rich countries, to increase their climate aid to poor countries to $ 100 billion per year from 2020. “Failure to provide essential climate finance and to finance loss and damage is measured in lives and income for our communities, and that, my friends, is immoral, and it is unfair. ”