Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Com­mon­wealth be­lieves many de­vel­op­ing na­tions will not sur­vive un­less there is more help for cli­mate fi­nanc­ing.  

It is why the Com­mon­wealth will be ad­vo­cat­ing for a new sys­tem by which de­vel­op­ing na­tions can eq­ui­tably ac­cess fund­ing to com­bat cli­mate change.

Speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad, Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Pa­tri­cia Scot­land un­der­scored how much Caribbean na­tions suf­fer from nat­ur­al dis­as­ters which they con­tribute very lit­tle to.

“If you look at the green­house gas­es, 80 per cent has been cre­at­ed by the G20, on­ly five per cent by small is­land de­vel­op­ing states (SIDS) and the least de­vel­oped coun­tries which have dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly felt the bur­den, if you look at the num­ber of deaths and in­juries by cli­mate change, 99 per cent is suf­fered in the glob­al south and SIDS are the most dis­ad­van­taged.”  

Scot­land said in the af­ter­math of a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter, de­vel­op­ing coun­tries are plunged in­to fur­ther debt as cur­rent­ly many de­vel­op­ing states are con­sid­ered high- or mid­dle-in­come coun­tries on the ba­sis of gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) per capi­ta. This ren­ders them in­el­i­gi­ble for con­ces­sion­ary fi­nanc­ing on favourable terms. It’s why the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al wants to use the plat­form of the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing to ad­vo­cate fur­ther for a change to a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in­dex.  

“The whole point of the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in­dex is to say that it can­not just be the ques­tion of how rich you are, or what your GDP is, you have to look at the coun­try’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. The coun­tries in our re­gion are in­nate­ly vul­ner­a­ble to the cli­mate due to ris­ing sea lev­els and how prone we are to hur­ri­canes and floods. In the past, they used to say that a coun­try is judged by how much GDP they have and if it’s high they do not need any help, but we know that’s not true. We know that be­cause of our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, we need to take in­to ac­count the things that are out­side of our con­trol like the di­rect cor­re­la­tion be­tween cli­mate dis­as­ters and na­tion­al debt.”  

The Do­mini­can-born Scot­land said it was not a ques­tion of if re­form can hap­pen, she be­lieves it must hap­pen.

“The ar­chi­tec­ture is no longer fit for pur­pose, it was struc­tured un­der the ba­sis that fis­cal rec­ti­tude would de­liv­er what was need­ed for each coun­try, but that’s just not true, be­cause if you look at what most coun­tries are fac­ing, this is ex­oge­nous shocks out­side of our con­trol.

“When the mas­sive hur­ri­canes hit coun­tries, the hur­ri­cane does not ask ‘Are you demon­strat­ing prop­er fis­cal man­age­ment?’, no they took all the de­vel­op­ment and threw it in­to the sea but did not take the debt with it so in or­der to build back bet­ter we need more mon­ey, so that old scheme does not work.”

The Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al said she was con­fi­dent that change is on the hori­zon as the Cari­com re­gion pos­sess­es charis­mat­ic lead­ers.  

“Our re­gion has pow­er­ful ad­vo­cates, the World is lis­ten­ing to all of us and so our voice isn’t de­ter­mined by our size and our size en­ables us to help them to lis­ten. Look at what we did for apartheid, look at what Nel­son Man­dela said, he thanked the com­mon­wealth sec­re­tari­at, but he al­so thanked the Caribbean be­cause it was the Caribbean’s lead­er­ship that led to the end­ing of apartheid. Our his­to­ry tells us that which we put our minds to, will be de­liv­ered.”