Dear Editor,
One of the highlights of what we could call the 2024 United Nations high level General Assembly season was the launch of the third iteration of the Bridgetown Initiative – “Bridgetown 3.0” The Bridgetown Initiative is that compendium of interlocking ideas and demands that are geared towards reorienting the international economic and financial system towards providing more support and a fairer deal for developing countries; making available more financial resources to help developing countries adapt to the climate crisis; helping developing countries to make their economies more resilient and to “shock proof” them from the effects of natural disasters; and providing the resources that developing countries need to achieve the UN’s “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs). The Bridgetown Initiative emerged out of a high-level retreat that was held in Barbados in late July 2022, and its champion is the Government of Barbados and Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley in particular.
Over the past two years, the Bridgetown Initiative and the sustained advocacy around it has led or significantly contributed to several extremely important breakthroughs for small developing nations like Barbados and its fellow CARICOM member states. One of the most fundamental breakthroughs has been to secure across-the-board acceptance of the idea that “Debt Pause Clauses” should be inserted in the debt instruments of developing countries, such that, if the country is hit by a natural disaster or a pandemic, it would be entitled to pause its debt payments for a 2 year period while it takes steps to recover from the disaster. Some other significant breakthroughs are as follows:- 1. After many concerted urgings, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) finally created the “Resilience and Sustainability Trust”, thereby making development and climate-resilience finance available to developing countries on extremely favourable terms. (Barbados, it should be noted, was the very first country to benefit from this new programme)
2. The United Nations’ climate change “Loss and Damage Fund” was finally launched last year at COP28 with an initial $700 million in commitments; 3. The G20 Group of wealthy developed nations has committed to re-channelling more than $100 Billion of their IMF financial assets known as “Special Drawing Rights” towards funding mechanisms that are devoted towards providing development and climate related finance for developing countries; 4. The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), World Bank and other official sector lenders are now including natural disaster clauses across a range of new and existing loan agreements; 5. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has unlocked an additional $100 Billion of additional lending simply through undertaking internal reforms of its Capital Adequacy Framework as urged by the Bridgetown Initiative; 6. The African Development Bank (AfDB) is now
increasing lending by raising hybrid capital from private investors as urged by the Bridgetown Initiative
7. In accordance with the recommendations of the Bridgetown Initiative, the World Bank has committed to tripling its guarantee capacity and other guarantee providers are upscaling their local currency offerings, thereby making credit more accessible to developing countries and on more reasonable terms, and, 8. The United Nations has finally accepted that a “Multidimensional Vulnerability Index” that focuses heavily on vulnerability to the climate crisis, should be the instrument for determining whether a country should have access to concessional financing, rather than the crude and inaccurate practice of measuring per capita Gross Domestic Product
As significant as these gains have been, the Bridgetown Initiative is not resting on its laurels, and “Bridgetown 3.0” has gone on to further demand that new sources of progressive finance be established to not only fortify the UN’s Loss and Damage Fund, but to also provide the funds needed to secure such “Global Public Commons” as a mitigation of global warming, preservation of the World’s bio-diversity, and provision of the food security, fresh water needs, education, health and housing requirements of the mass of humanity. Some of the new measures that Bridgetown 3.0 calls for are an international tax on the super-rich; the taxing of fossil fuel company windfall profits; the implementing of an emissions levy on greenhouse gas producing industrial sectors like aviation and shipping; and a tax on certain international financial transactions.
It is not possible in this short missive to outline all of the demands that Bridgetown 3.0 is advancing under the three headings of “Change the Rules of the Game”, “Shock Proof Economies”, and “Dramatically Increase Financing for the SDGs and Climate Action”. I would sincerely recommend that citizens of Barbados and the wider Caribbean should take the time and make the effort to fully inform themselves of the details of the Bridgetown Initiative, for in so doing, they will experience a feeling of enormous pride in the role that our Caribbean Civilization is playing in world affairs today and will gain valuable insights into possible ways to solve mankind’s existential crises.
Sincerely,
David Comissiong
Ambassador to CARICOM
Barbados