Blueprints for a Greener Tomorrow: A Conversation With Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados

Despite contributing less than 0.01% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the country of Barbados faces dangerous vulnerabilities due to climate change. Prime Minister Mia Mottley discusses the need to support developing countries in addressing climate change, including global financial reforms such as the Bridgetown Initiative, and solutions for creating a sustainable and resilient future.

SHAH: Great. Hi, everybody. How are you? I’m thrilled to be here with you at the Council on Foreign Relations. And welcome to this extraordinary opportunity to have a conversation with a leader I admire and will introduce in just a moment. Let me welcome those of you here in the room, but also so many of you joining online. We’re thrilled to be together and look forward to a conversation and then questions, per the usual CFR format. Mike, thank you for hosting us here today.

And let me take just a moment to introduce someone who certainly does not need to be introduced in this context. Prime Minister Mia Mottley is the eighth prime minister of Barbados. She has an extraordinary background, and I would just say, most notably for this week at the General Assembly, with a focus—an intense focus on climate change and equity on a global basis, I can’t think of a more prominent, articulate, intelligent, and influential voice on climate, on development, on our shared responsibilities to each other, on how we tackle global public goods, and how we kind of fight the populism that’s split us apart, and create a new framework for working together. And Prime Minister Mottley’s contributions have, of course, been recognized by everyone. I think one of the more notable ones was when she was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential leaders in the world. Prime Minister, thank you for being with us.

MOTTLEY: Thank you, Raj. But Raj is being very modest, because Raj, and Eric (sp), and others, along with a number of other people, have played a critical role in us being able to pull together much of the policy—I see some in here—much of the policy work that we’ve done to get us to this point. So this is by no means a singular effort, or a Barbadian effort, or a mere Mottley effort. But thank you.

SHAH: Well, and a couple of years ago you made reference to your extraordinary invitation to me, but also to dozens of others of contributors, to the basic idea that the world is facing a climate crisis, a growth and development and jobs crisis, and a resilience crisis. And you brought us all together. And we had a wonderful set of sessions. That ultimately became the Bridgetown Initiative. And today you are previewing for us what will be formally launched tomorrow, which is Bridgetown 3.0.

MOTTLEY: That’s right.

SHAH: But I wonder if you could just tell us, why do we need a Bridgetown Initiative and a Bridgetown 3.0 today, in the current context?

MOTTLEY: Because we need to save people and the planet. And the fuel for doing so is the financing. The success that we need is a change of attitude and a resetting of attitudes across the world. So that’s why we start with Bridgetown 3.0, to remind us that we need to continue to change the rules of the game. Have we seen some progress? Yes, we have. Kristalina has added a new position on the board to another sub-Saharan African country. But you heard the permanent rep to the U.N. from the U.S., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, speak eloquently recently about the need for the reform of both the Security Council in terms of two members from Africa and perhaps a small island developing state.

I think the principle is that these institutions were created, and their governance mechanisms were settled, particularly with respect to its membership, at a time when many of the countries that are now independent, sovereign countries were colonies. You cannot appreciate what we’re going through if you don’t have knowledge or people at the table for consultation. And very often people will make decisions, for example, that may affect small island developing states, who constitute a quarter of the world’s states, without actually knowing the implications.

But if you have someone at the table, what might be even an innocent decision but loaded with awful consequences, you can stop ahead of the time. And you need to do it. Why? Because most small states don’t have a buffer for error. Don’t have a buffer for benign neglect. And therefore, changing the rules of the game to allow us to be seen and heard is absolutely critical, particularly given the multiplicity of challenges that we are facing.

SHAH: And a lot of being seen and heard in that context, in your vision forward, has been about adequate access to financing to build resilient economies, to address the climate changes that are upon us—often not because of carbon emissions from either small island states or developing economies. To put the challenge in context, about a decade ago when the world signed Paris and the SDGs there were net inflows of $225 billion to developing economies—to the public sector of developing economies. Today, we know from the Singh-Summers analysis, this year it will be $50 billion transferred out of developing economies to creditors, primarily, across the rest of the world. In that context, how are those economies supposed to invest in health, in education, in greening their energy economies, and expanding, you know, efforts to build infrastructure for growth. What are the solutions that are viable, given the challenge we face?

MOTTLEY: Well, how frank do you want me to be? (Laughter.)

SHAH: Extremely frank. This is—this is a group that can take it. And I’ve heard you in your most impassioned form, and I think that’s what we should get here.

MOTTLEY: Let’s start. Most of these countries started without a development compact. They started having been the victims of the extraction of wealth for centuries. It therefore meant that you had undeveloped systems of education, undeveloped systems of healthcare, no housing, very limited capacity in terms of the treasury. And then you all of a sudden ask them to adjust to these multiplicity of global challenges, very little of which they have contributed to. And then, say, go and incur more debt. And then when you do it, then you realize that I’m crowding out this fiscal space that I have for education, for healthcare. So we are being, as I’ve said over and over, victims twice, both in terms of the extraction of wealth for the industrial revolution and then the double jeopardy comes because that same Industrial Revolution has put us on the front line of the climate crisis. Now, when you add to that the fact that the colonial structures and relationships of power were cemented in the context of the international institutions, be it the U.N. or the IFIs, that’s the triple exposure to jeopardy, because it then means that you don’t have the capacity to change the trajectory or to change the attitude of these institutions.

How is it that quantitative easing is not recommended for countries across the world prior to COVID, but as soon as COVID comes—(snaps fingers)—the G-7 countries engage in the most massive exercise in quantitative easing known? How is it that we continue—and President Lula spoke about it yesterday in his address to the General Assembly; I’ve spoken about it over and over—that Ghana and other countries in Africa are borrowing at multiply—multiple rates of what European countries can borrow at in circumstances where the needs are greater and in circumstances where there is no clear explanation? You can tell me about safe assets and you can give me all the technical language, but when all is said and done there is a fundamental disparity. How is it that carbon market prices in Guyana are six and eight dollars a ton, but in Europe in excess of $100 a ton? There is need for a fundamental reset first in terms of the need for equity and the removal of disparity of treatment.

Then there is need to come now to the mechanics of how—that’s why I asked you how frank do you want me to be.

SHAH: Yeah, yeah. Right. (Laughter.) Right.

MOTTLEY: Then there is need to come now to the mechanics of what we must do, because we find ourselves in the world that we have not the one that we want. So we have seen some improvements, and let us be fair, but the problem is that we’re not seeing the speed and the scope of what we need to do. And if you ask me to be diverted as my own country is—I just—we got hit by Hurricane Beryl. We didn’t get humanitarian disaster that the Grenadines had or that Curacao had, but my fishing industry was decimated—90 percent of it. All of my beaches on the west coast affected. All of my jetties and my fishing harbor completely affected. So I now got to find money to divert—to fix a harbor, a fishing harbor, and I still have to—because of the circumstances of that harbor it remains vulnerable, so I’ve got to build a new one as well. But I can’t just go straight to the new one, because the new one needs eighteen months of studies before I can do anything. So I’ve got to repair immediately and plan for building.

But that money would have been otherwise spent with the fiscal space that I need to have in the areas of health care or—

SHAH: And education.

MOTTLEY: —and fighting crime, or in building education. So I give you that example where harsh choices have to be made, and where very often the best-made plans are put aside not because of anything we have done but because within seventy-two hours you’re told—(snaps fingers)—get yourself ready. God knows what’s going to happen at—in Cuba and Florida with Helene as we speak. And what we are missing is that’s just the heart attacks. Let’s deal with the chronic incidence of climate. That’s water, drought. That is wildfires, the other things that are literally decimating the capacity of communities to live.

And the big one—and you and I have talked about this in D.C.—is the role that the absence of insurance—affordable insurance will play in completely changing the deal, because the whole financial system is premised on if I want a mortgage, I need insurance; if I want to borrow from a bank, I need insurance. Well, if you’re not underrating the risks of wildfires anymore in California, and you are either increasing the cost of premia or not underrating risk for hurricanes and floods in certain parts of the U.S., people will just move to another state. But in my country and the other sovereign countries of the Caribbean, where are they going to move to?

SHAH: So you have taken that thinking and you’ve called for some bold transformational reforms of the Bretton Woods institutions—the IMF, the World Bank.

MOTTLEY: Yeah.

SHAH: The Bridgetown Initiative helped create the circumstances in which special drawing rights were able to be provided—

MOTTLEY: And the RST was formed, in fairness.

SHAH: —and the Resilience and Sustainability Trust was formed out of a lot of that thinking and work. Your vision for the World Bank is a total transformation of an institution that was built after World War II to meet the moment, especially around public goods and especially on risk-taking and leverage. And you, together with others you’ve brought into this movement—President Macron, President Lula—have a vision for levies and other forms of recurrent expenditure that—of revenue that could help finance the climate transition the world needs to make. Can you give us a sense of what some of those ideas are that you’re most excited about? But also it's easy in this setting to say—to say these are what should happen; it’s much, much harder politically to make it happen. You’ve been extraordinarily effective at getting leaders around the world to buy into these ideas. What is it going to take to bring some of this into reality?

MOTTLEY: Well, you’ve asked a lot of things in one. (Laughter.)

SHAH: Yeah. I know.

MOTTLEY: So let’s deal first with the World Bank.

And the IMF—

SHAH: World Bank is a great place to start.

MOTTLEY: The IMF is doing—continuing to address reform, and I hope that next month we’ll see a reduction on the surcharges. I would have liked to have seen the elimination of it, particularly since they have precautionary balances of 27 billion and are getting 3 billion a year, but that’s another story. But they’re going in the right direction.

With the World Bank, the fundamental reform that is needed, I think, is to make it fit for purpose for the third decade of the twenty-first century. If it was formed today, it wouldn’t only be about reconstruction and elimination of poverty; it would be the guardian of the global public commons. And if it is to be the guardian of the global public commons, then it needs revenue to be able to support that role. And that revenue can’t only come from public money, quite frankly; that revenue has to start to take into account that since the 1940s multinational corporations have a far bigger footprint than in many instances some countries across the world. And philanthropy is a major source of funding, as you well know, that has made a lot of wrong things right.

So what do we do? We first established a principle of how do you fund those global public goods. Well, if you helped contribute to the problem, you should help contribute to the solution. And if you’re going to benefit egregiously from the solution above a certain rate of return, then you should also leave two, three cents on the table of every dollar for it. If we started to do that alone and we looked at shipping, aviation, oil and gas, financial services—I should perhaps tell you what the global public goods are because then, when I call big pharma and big tech, you begin to know that we’re not talking about climate and biodiversity loss alone; we’re talking about the victims of fragility and conflict. We’re talking about water and food insecurity. We’re talking about pandemics, both the traditional one and the slow-motion silent one like antimicrobial resistance, for which we hope to have a high-level political declaration at the U.N. tomorrow. And we’re talking about big tech—sorry, we’re talking about digital divide and artificial intelligence that may be unregulated. And finally, we’re talking about our soil health, because the declining yields in soil will make—put us in a serious, serious battle for food security in the next twenty, thirty years.

It therefore means that the principle extends to each of those. So if big tech has helped contribute to the problem, help me solve and bridge the gap. Big pharma, we had two—twenty companies doing antibiotic research in 2000; we have four. I give you these examples to show that we’re not asking to bankrupt anyone. What we are saying: Anywhere between one cent and five cents, leave on the table. Value of global shipping, $7 trillion last year. One percent—cents on that is 70 billion (dollars). But the most important thing is that is recurring. So instead of asking countries to put a one-off hundred-billion dollar to help you, you are creating a pipeline of recurring funding for an institution to be fit for purpose. And then, for philanthropy—(laughs)—I know that you can help me lead this one—(laughter)—

SHAH: Let’s see what’s coming here. (Laughs.)

MOTTLEY: We don’t want—because part and parcel of it is the magic of collection. And that’s why the IMO and IATA, et cetera, are better modes of collection rather than countries, who may or may not hand over the money.

But for philanthropy, you just need a global compact.

SHAH: Yeah.

MOTTLEY: You guys get to spend a hundred cents in every dollar on what you want. That’s great. But you live on a planet, so leave three or four cents for what the world needs and take the other ninety-six cents for what the world—what you want to do.

If this was a bar of chocolate and I asked you to leave three or four cents, I’d be taking out this corner. In other words, negligible. But the impact on being able to supersize the funding of the World Bank, to be able to protect the global community, because the smallest living organism is equally one of the most deadly—the mosquito. So that if you have a small country whose practices lead to a public health catastrophe, you have another COVID. Crazy. So let us protect the planet Earth and let us protect the people.

Now you asked about the politics. Fortunately, there’s a lot of momentum. The Paris Pact has come about. The African Declaration on Climate.

SHAH: I mean, just to say, you’re—you did—you helped create that momentum.

MOTTLEY: No, all of us did.

SHAH: I mean, President Ruto, President Lula. I mean, getting regional heads of states to come together and have these summits and get on board has made a big difference.

MOTTLEY: Agreed. And in Sharm El-Sheikh we met with President Macron. And out of that came the wonderful initiative, for the Paris Pact for People and Planet. After the Paris Pact for People and Planet, President Ruto had the conference in Nairobi. Last September, a year ago, we have the Africa Climate Declaration. At the same time on a parallel track, minister from Ghana was moving the institutional arrangements for the V-20 countries, climate vulnerable countries. And in fact, this morning we took over chairmanship of the V-20 countries, which is 68 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and with another two having just applied, Suriname and Nepal, to join.

But here’s the deal. Everybody has come up with a declaration, including us. So I’ve said, look, roll out your sleeves now. Let’s do the heavy lifting. Almost 60-70 percent of each of these declarations say the same thing. Stop talking on parallel tracks. Let us see where the commonalities are in the next few months. Let us agree that we have consensus on this. And let us identify then what remains outstanding. And work our way towards, next year, the Financing for Development Conference in Seville, Spain, and also COP-30 by Brazil. If we—and why am I saying the end of next year? Finance is not the destination.

The destination is the actual adaptation projects being executed. And you’ve just heard me say, why I have to both repair and build a new fishing harbor is because you need studies. You can’t just go and put down things without feasibility studies as to what will be the impact on currents, or erosion, or all of those things. So I genuinely believe that we need to summon the political will. We had a luncheon today with President Macron, and with President Lula, and with the prime minister of Portugal, and president of Colombia, and a number of other persons. So there’s a lot of activity. Earlier this week the chancellor of Germany organized another small group of us. There’s a lot happening in terms of the conversation.

We need now to bring it together. And whether it is the U.N., or whether it is us as political leaders of the world, to treat the urgency. My role is just to keep making noise to remind people, hey, clock is running out. (Laughter.) The clock is running out. And we will continue to say so, not because we want to be obnoxious but because if you in the northern worlds don’t want additional migrants, and if you want global stability, and you don’t want the risk of more pandemics, and you don’t want the risk of more coups, and you don’t want the risk of more violence and war, well, then the important thing to do is act proactively.

And the proactive action is will we be equal in this generation to the challenges that face us in a way that those who stood in World War II after the victory were equal to the challenges which faced them? They cannot be condemned because they were creatures of their times. And in their times, we just weren’t part of the equation. But for today, where we know better and where we can do better, we must do better. (Applause.)

SHAH: Well, that’s an extraordinary comment on which to end. Let me thank you for that conversation, and open us up to questions. And we may have—I know we have questions online as well. And you’ll signal when those are available. And we’ll go—so we’ll start in the room, right here in the front. If you could please introduce yourself along with the question that would be great.

Q: Good evening. Earl Carr, representing CJPA Global Advisors.

Rajiv, Prime Minister, thank you for a riveting discussion. I should start by saying that I do have a connection to the Caribbean. I was conceived in Jamaica, on a story I was told. (Laughter.)

SHAH: That’s a lot of information for the first question. (Laughter.) But we’ll take it. We’ll take it.

MOTTLEY: But what it does is make us have a symbiotic relationship. (Laughter.)

Q: We, CJPA, are—we focus on solar projects in the Caribbean. We just won an RFP from Jamaica’s Ministry of Energy. And we worked with CEQR to do the environmental survey in Jamaica. And we’re looking to replicate that model in seven other countries in the Caribbean, including Barbados. My question relates to organizations like the DFC. They view countries like Bahamas, Barbados as high-income countries, and they are not able to receive funding. How do you respond to institutions that designate those countries as high-level income countries? Thank you.

MOTTLEY: So, Bridgetown one and two spoke to this issue at length. We have not won the battle yet. Bridgetown 3.0 repeats it, that let us stop using historic per capita GNI to be able to determine whether a country is eligible for concessional funding or not. Why? Because it is as relevant as you taking my blood pressure from two years ago to determine if I’m going to have a heart attack tonight. It’s utterly useless. What is needed is for you to appreciate that I can have wipeout risk in twenty-four hours. That is vulnerability. And even if I don’t have full wipeout risk, we need to find a definition for climate vulnerability that works.

Now I am aware that the U.N. has settled on a multidimensional vulnerability index, although I’m nervous about it because, to my mind it is still a broad-brush approach. And what is needed actually is a laser-like approach. Now, having said that, our advocacy has had some level of progress. The World Bank graduated Barbados back in the early ’90s. And the only thing we ever got from the World Bank since then, in terms of concessional funding, was in fact for—through exceptional access for HIV and AIDS. And then in recent years—and that was the mid-’90s—and in recent years, the pandemic and the climate.

What is the problem? I don’t know if I should be fully frank here, but—(laughter)—the bottom line is, the geopolitics of having to go for exceptional access does not work. When I didn’t agree to Guaidó, I found out that very clearly. But it didn’t bother me, because we learned to be friends of all and satellites of none when we became an independent country. So I impart that for what it is worth. Because we kept arguing that, look, there is an inherent vulnerability, we have seen progress—because the World Bank admitted us back into IBRD financing earlier this year, which means that we don’t have to rely on exceptional access. But having said that, the terms and conditions of that for vulnerable countries are still not appropriate.

And we’ve said, the direction in which Ajay is going with the establishment of that new instrument for—fifty-year instrument for vulnerable countries, the problem is that it’s limited to cross-border activity within the context of climate. And I’m saying no. It needs to be broader, because I shouldn’t have to do a cross-border project to be able to get fifty-year money to build resilience. Secondly, Kristalina has put in place a project that is not limited to low-income countries, like the PRGT is, but in fact, the RST says, we see you as a middle-income, vulnerable country. And therefore, we are prepared to give you twenty-year money with a five-year moratorium. We’re going in the right direction, but we need other instruments because I can’t build schools and hospitals with fifteen-year money, or even twenty-year money easily. And most of it is ten- and fifteen-year money that is given to us for development projects.

SHAH: And could you—I’m going to jump in and just—

Q: Please.

SHAH: You’ve spoken eloquently about how, you know, the U.K. used fifty-year money to build out its own infrastructure. And I think—I think it’s easy to forget—

MOTTLEY: Well, fifty—the U.K. used—let me tell you, the U.K. used—they raised bonds in 2014 and—sorry—1914 and 1917 to fight World War I. It translated that in 1932 to a perpetual bond, which was only repaid in 2014. So effectively, the U.K. refinanced its reconstruction from the two world wars with a hundred-year bond, because that’s what it needed. Germany had its debt service capped in relation to its export earnings after World War II. The U.K.—and we talk reparations. The U.K. paid slave owners twenty million pounds in 1834 and only repaid the money a few years ago in this century. So the notion of long-term money is well-known to our countries, and I’m sure if I go across the G-7 countries and do a little research I’ll find more examples.

All we’re asking for is a consideration—think about building a school. At least give me a little time for the child to leave university and get a job to be able to help pay back for the school, because they can’t do that if it’s fifteen-year money.

SHAH: And what if it’s—

MOTTLEY: If it’s thirty-, forty-, and fifty-year, I have a reasonable chance.

SHAH: I think one of the core principles underlying Bridgetown and now 3.0 is that long-dated, concessional capital that is how much of the rest of the world helped build a lot of the public infrastructure that defines our—

MOTTLEY: Let me add quickly, Raj.

SHAH: —reality today.

MOTTLEY: We can bring back down debt overnight. I inherited a country with the third highest per capita debt in the world—177 percent. We restructured the debt immediately on coming in to 119 percent. The month after we restructured, COVID came—bam! Went back up to 152 (percent). It’s now 105 (percent).

You know what I can’t do? Recover from social implosion in under a generation. You can’t, and nobody—you wouldn’t be expected to do it in the U.S., or Canada, or the U.K. or France, or Germany. We can’t do it in small states.

SHAH: I think there is another question on the second row. Let’s go right there and—

Q: Prime Minister Mottley, Michael Weisberg, University of Pennsylvania. Thank you very much.

I also work small island states, so you know we’re ready to follow you into the future. I do have a question about the politics especially of the innovative sources, so I think a lot—you’ve talked about the progress in the MDBs, but—the innovative sources, the shipping levy. So far nothing—airline levy, great idea. It’s frozen. And, you know, as you know, it’s not always the G-7 that’s blocking these things.

So I’m just curious how you see those politics moving forward, and what are the kinds of things you think advocates on the outside can to do to move them forward?

MOTTLEY: We’ve started to see some movement. When we left Paris last year, there was a(n) IMO meeting in July, and that meeting rejected out of hand the shipping levies. As we speak, there is almost a recognition that is inevitable. The problem is that the purpose for which they want to use it is to allow the ship owners to build green ships. And we say, no. If you want to do that, take a third, but leave a third for adaptation financing and leave a third for loss and damage fund, which is still only at 800 million (dollars). If you do that, then we have a credible program. Even if you said half of one percent assessed instead of one, that’s 35 billion (dollars)—ten billion (dollars) for the ship owners, twelve billion (dollars) for loss and damage, twelve, thirteen billion (dollars) for adaptation. So we have seen things moving.

With airlines, we haven’t had the conversation sufficiently, but my own perspective on it is that we do a mandatory charge for business travel, first-class travel, and private planes. For economy, we ask people—because it important to recognize human agency. We ask every traveler for economy are you prepared to put in five dollars to save the planet. I guarantee you that more than half will say yes, and therefore we have an appreciable amount collected by IATA to help put in the pool.

Now there are not 10,000 oil and gas companies in the world; there are a handful. But we keep talking about each other, and we keep talking at each other. I want us to sit in a room around a table, and I said to President Macron that I think you and President Lula, you and President Lula, you both have state oil companies. Convene a meeting. Let us sit in a table around—because there’s a win-win. They don’t have a plan to live on Mars. (Laughter.) They don’t. So therefore, we have to leave here because their children are going to be living in Shanghai when Shanghai is at risk. Their children are going to be living in Miami and New York when Miami and New York are at risk. We are only the canaries in the mine, and we already see what the wildfires are doing in Greece, what they are doing in California, what they are doing in Canada. We see the floods in Nigeria, and to add that to the insecurity of the citizen, insecurity that’s taking place with Boko Haram and others, to add that to the four or five other coups that you’ve seen in Africa—come, come, come. We can do better. We have the experience of history, we have the creative capacity. All that is needed is political will, thank god. It’s not a new technology that has to be developed. It’s a yes or a no. And let’s get the yeses.

SHAH: Let’s get the yeses. And other questions? I thought I saw one on this side. No, over here? Anything online?

MOTTLEY: Can I say something more, Raj?

SHAH: Yes.

MOTTLEY: My sense over the last few years is—I like to—I get it. Large countries have institutions that are monolithic, and it’s therefore difficult to see change in them.

When we meet in a room with most individuals, they get it. But when it comes now to translating that to change, with these monolithic institutions, that’s where we’re finding the problems. And that is going to require political leadership. That is going to require global, moral, strategic leadership because the institutions are not constructed in a way to accommodate monolithic changes or fundamental reform. And it is only with leaders who are going to be resolute and carry with them the people who they have.

Now the problem is have we done as good a job in explaining to the average citizen why they may be paying more for a particular form of renewable electricity, particularly in smaller countries that don’t have the economies of scale. Have we explained to our citizens why we are giving overseas development yet countries are spending money because the climate crisis is so critical to us to resolve to avoid climate migration.

If we don’t do those things, you’re going to continue with a rise in populism, you’re going to continue with the climate deniers, you’re going to continue with too slow a pace for what ought to be a race.

SHAH: Yes, well, and you know, we’re here in the Council on Foreign Relations, which has a mission of connecting our foreign policy to our people, and we certainly don’t make much of an effort to explain the rationale for the World Bank, or the IMF, or even the United Nations when you look at the statistics.

I thought I saw a question in the back there on the left.

Q: Thank you. Andrea Shalal with Reuters. Thanks so much for being here.

I wanted to ask you about your perspective on China’s role in all of these discussions. You know, we’ve seen very, very slow progress in terms of debt restructuring and, you know, that’s been an ongoing problem now for a number of years. Do you have any sense, or can you sort of talk us through where you think China is and whether they have been constructive, and whether the, you know, wars that are going on—particularly China’s relationship with Russia—is going to complicate this kind of broader effort to step up funding and get more people around the table?

I’m sort of reminded of the Sovereign Debt Roundtable that was started to do precisely what you are talking about around the debt issue, and it’s—you know, it’s progress has been—

SHAH: Slow. It has been slow.

Q: —halting.

SHAH: It has been slow. (Laughter.)

MOTTLEY: I think progress has been slow on all fronts. The Common Framework has not worked, if we are to be honest, really.

SHAH: Right.

MOTTLEY: The length of time the Zambia took to be able to do that restructuring—I know that if I took longer than fifteen months to do my debt restructuring, we would have been dead through COVID. So as much as we talk about China, we need to be able to be brutally honest that none of the parties are making sufficient progress on the issue of debt. And I am sympathetic to His Holiness, who I think is going to start the conversation again, or has started it, on a jubilee moment again.

The reality is that we’ve seen multiple crises—a polycrisis moment—literally carry countries to the brink. And that’s why we argue and support Vera Songwe in her argument for a liquidity injection—almost like an adrenalin injection—to be able to bring from the edge. A number of countries if they get that injection of liquidity will not morph into a debt crisis.

With respect to whether China and the Paris Club can get their act together and act singularly, I would like to believe that we ought to aspire to it because we do not benefit from two separate processes with respect to debt. That means that we are focusing on those who want to own rather than focusing on those who are in need of the forgiveness at the particular time. So it is the opposite of a people-centered approach.

Secondly, as it relates to the wars, all of the wars are distracting. The wars are taking away from, one, the attention, first and foremost, that we should be putting on solving the climate crisis and dealing with some other fundamental issues like unregulated AI, like pandemics that we should be focused on. And there is really no need for us to be engaging in war when we know that at the end of the day, history is replete with the fact that virtually every war has come to an end. So the question is only how long will it take, and at what price.

So does that mean additional effort? Yes, it should. Can we isolate China and Russia and make them the bogeymans in here alone? No, we cannot because they are all players who are responsible in some manner or form, either directly or indirectly through the provisioning of the wars.

SHAH: I think there’s a question right over here.

Q: Madam Prime Minister, great to see you here.

MOTTLEY: Good to see you.

Q: Ramakrishna from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Prime Minister, the question is this. The accepted wisdom now is the finance needs are so vast that the public money is not going to do it. And yet, all of the discussions in the United Nations are about what did the public—how much of the public money should come from the north to the south. You know, I would be interested in your reflections on that.

But the second question is—

MOTTLEY: Let me do the first question because I’ve gotten a little old, you know how it is.

SHAH: Yeah, let’s do—let’s do one. (Laughter.)

MOTTLEY: And I don’t want to forget.

SHAH: Let’s do one question because a lot of folks out there—

Q: And the second one is more important for me.

MOTTLEY: Yes, most people are talking about that with respect to public money, but it’s two points: one, that even if we accept that there is not enough public money, what public money there is must come to the table. And the justice of the situation demands it because of the manner in which this crisis has emerged, and the promises that were made from as far back as Copenhagen.

Having said that, we are now in a decade where there is a multiplicity of crises, and therefore, we accept that there may well be a genuine case because a lot of the developed countries would have pushed to the limit their own national recovery programs and hence would have fiscal challenges at this point in time. What I’ve laid out here in terms of global public goods from the development end of things can carry us to that point. What the IMF can do with new quotas and a new issuance of SDRs, and giving those SDRs to multilateral development banks so that it can fully have a broader access, a broader amount of money available to countries, is exactly where we need to go.

I ask for a scholarly paper because I’ve only just articulated it, but we need a paper that literally takes the good work done by the president of Singapore, Ngozi, and others before, and all of them is to be able to say, hey, guys, we’ve done some preliminary work, but can we now repurpose it, and can we now recognize that in repurposing it, the appropriate institution is the World Bank. And if we do that, then we have a win-win for everyone.

 So while we may not have it as standard speak yet in the U.N., I hope that by next year, in Seville, that we can have this as a critical component of the urgent action needed by the international communities to make the World Bank appropriate and fit for the twenty-first century third decade.

SHAH: OK. Next question, maybe right here.

MOTTLEY: I feel sorry about not taking your second one. (Laughter.)

SHAH: Sorry, just trying to get folks in.

Q: Hi. Lauren Racusin, Bloomberg Associates. Thank you for this very inspiring discussion, Prime Minister, and leading the charge on such important issues.

As you know, there’s an upcoming U.N. general secretary selection process, and I was curious your thoughts on perhaps running and putting your hat in the ring.

MOTTLEY: As far as I know, António Guterres has more than two years left, so let’s go again. (Laughter.)

SHAH: Next question. OK, let’s go to orange—in the orange back over there. Yes, thank you.

Q: Thank you. Elise Labott. I’m the Murrow press fellow here at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Ngozi actually went kind of viral a few weeks ago when she spoke about this movement towards deglobalization and how it’s kind of leaving the Global South behind. And I’m wondering what are your thoughts on that, and how multilateral institutions like the United Nations can reverse that trend. Thank you.

MOTTLEY: Well, it’s not the U.N. that has to reverse it; it’s the mindset of governments with capital that have to reverse it because that’s the problem. The reality is that we’ve seen where the benefits have been, but because some of these benefits have not sufficiently trickled down to the people who need it at the bottom, we have the rise of populism. And let us call it for what it is. The bias against migration is rooted in historic injustices and attitudes.

So we need to be able to sell and explain to people how they benefit. The truth is that a trade war between China and the U.S. just puts the whole world at risk, and that’s not in anyone’s interest. And at the end of the day, it actually makes it worse for both countries because they still live within a global ecosystem.

We have accepted that the scale of nervousness and anxiety means that we will no longer go only for efficient supply chains, but we will go for resilient supply chains. And it’s probably going to take another two or three decades before we turn the corner again back to be able to work in that seamless manner that we do.

And I hope and pray that messages like Ngozi’s own will continue to resonate because that is exactly what the world needs to be able to apply the human—collective human ingenuity to solving the big problems of the earth related to climate, related to AI. I used to say all the time if we could—(laughs)—if we could send a man to the moon, and then we can spend billions of dollars in trying to solve male baldness—(laughter)—then we surely can be able to find the solution to the climate crisis.

Q: (Off mic.) (Laughter.)

SHAH: Why don’t we go over here to the side?

Q: Thank you very much, Madam Prime Minister.

I was just wondering, with regards to climate financing, what you think the role of central banks should be, particularly those in the G-7, G-20, and the Network for Greening the Financial System, which is, I think, the only organization that’s trying to work on these issues from a central bank level.

MOTTLEY: Yes, I don’t know enough about monetary economics to speak in a credible way on it, and I’m not going to try to do that. Suffice it to say that we know that we have some liquidity issues, and the disparity as to what is construed as safe assets has meant a disparity in terms of the cost of capital.

We also—and I’m not, by any stretch of imagination, an economist, but I also do know that once you agreed for the U.S. dollar to be effectively the reserve currency of the world, then it means that we need to act with a little more care as to how we use sanctions so as to avoid the fact that people will find alternative measures to get away from what is, in their view, inappropriate behavior affecting other sovereign states.

As it relates to other aspects of it, I used to say initially that we should put some of the SDRs totally into countries, and then I recognized from my own experience in Barbados with our own central bank that that will cause some difficulties, and in truth and in fact, the better use of the SDRs is through the multilateral development banks.

So I hope that I have established what I know and what I don’t know. (Laughter.)

SHAH: Next question? Maybe over here, yeah, with the glasses.

Q: David Nachman with the New York Attorney General’s Office. Thank you so much.

How do you factor into your planning in terms of Seville, and all the things that you’ve talked about, for the next, say, year, year and a half. How do you factor in the risk that the largest economy in the world will be headed by an administration of climate denialists—climate change denialists and populists?

MOTTLEY: We have to have contingency plans for everything, and we have to plan for the worst, and hope and pray for the best. I do not involve myself in the internal affairs of other countries. (Laughter.)

Suffice it to say, if you asked me whether I believe in the fact that we have a climate crisis, yes, I do. And would I have to engage persons who deny it, I hope that I could engage and persuade them otherwise, but if I can’t, then we have to plan for the worst.

 SHAH: Maybe one or two more. And here with the tie, and then we’ll go in the back there so that I don’t—I don’t miss you.

Q: Prime Minister, thank you. I’m Gordon LaForge from New America.

As you’ve been on this journey, starting with launching, you know, Bridgetown several years ago, could you just reflect on what has surprised you as you’ve moved forward and built this movement, and built this coalition, and worked with a lot of others? Has it gone the way you expected? Or what has been surprising for you as you’ve done this work?

MOTTLEY: I’m pleasantly surprised that we were able to be part of a wave that starts to recognize that there is need for reform. I’m disappointed that the piece which we need is not there. I am hopeful that if we can get leaders to understand that it’s not personal to them and not individual to them, but that we do need to break the mold of some of the institutional intransigence that we can actually make serious progress.

And I came to New York this week conscious that the world more than ever needs a message of hope. There is just too much despair and too much disappointment. We haven’t even talked about Sudan. I mean, what is happening in Sudan is such a travesty. And we talk about Middle East and West expanding there, and that’s wrong, and I think somebody said it well that effectively the need to ensure that you don’t allow Hamas to get away with it cannot translate itself into the scale of deaths that we have seen, and hopefully not the expansion of the war beyond Gaza to Lebanon and elsewhere in the region.

We have to give our people hope. They are the victims in part of the climate crisis. They are the victims of a cost-of-living crisis that was foisted upon them. They have come out of two to three years of not being able to move, and therefore the post-traumatic stress disorder, the anxiety of being restricted into a corner is all playing itself out. And in a very funny way, we have to accept that this is how it feels to live in the midst of a crisis.

But nobody believed that slavery would be abolished until it happened. Nobody believed that women would have the right to vote until it happened. Nobody believed when I was a student at university, even though we were protesting, that apartheid would be brought down or the Berlin Wall would come down. They all did. And I want to caution us to recognize that sometimes in the heat of the moment things can look very, very different from really and truly what they are. And I hope that by bringing greater levels of public awareness to our populations that they will keep the domestic pressure on on the governments, who then hopefully will have the courage to be able to make the big decisions that are needed to keep future generations safe, and certainly this generation from losing what it is losing.

SHAH: Excellent. Thank you. (Applause.)

I think we have time for one last question. And there’s a woman in the back there. I think you had your hand up a few times, so I want to make sure we get you in.

Q: I did, but you’ve answered already my questions. Alma Caballero. I’m a term member here at the Council. Thank you.

My question was very much in line to the November election. That’s the big elephant in the room. You have two very distinct views on the future of climate policy in this country. How do you make space to create awareness coming from the Caribbean? That’s one question.

And, two, also, to preserve—

MOTTLEY: How do you mean? What? Sorry.

Q: To create space, coming from the—

MOTTLEY: What kind of space?

Q: Coming from the Caribbean, for example, that not many people in Washington, unfortunately, look to—down south and pay attention to even Latin America as a whole because of the noise happening elsewhere, and that’s a reality. So how do you make sure that, you know, those that have to hear you listen to you?

MOTTLEY: By working hard and trying to reach as many as possible.

Look, I want to say that I find it curious. Because I’ve never been a soldier, I’ve never been a military tactician person, but if your flanks are open don’t you try to close them? And if you are part of the neighborhood, then it means that your flanks are open. And if Haiti right back down to Guyana is open, then that must be a vulnerability. I’ve said over and over the last major compact for development between the U.S. and the Caribbean was under Ronald Reagan. That’s—Mr. Reagan—President Reagan has been dead for some time now. (Laughter.) And there, therefore, is an urgent need for us to have that kind of engagement.

President Biden has done good work, the establishment of the American (sic; Americas) Partnership, but that’s the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean. I’m speaking now for CARICOM, the Caribbean Community. What is needed for us for stability is a drop in the ocean. It’s not even an accounting error. And therefore, I hope and pray that we recognize that there is a win-win equation for both the U.S. and the Caribbean—CARICOM—to be able to work together to be able to have a better development compact in place.

I will say this. And I—now, I don’t get involved in the internal politics, as I said. But as probably the only other Black female head in the Americas, it would be a betrayal of my gender for me not to share that a woman’s right to choose has nothing to do with politics. It is completely above politics. And this is a fundamental issue of agency that women have had to fight too long across millennia to be where they are today for us to go back in any manner, form, or fashion. (Applause.)

SHAH: I think—I think, Prime Minister, it’s my task to close us out. And I’ll just—I’m going to close us out by trying to answer the question about what’s surprised me as we’ve been on this journey and as I’ve watched your leadership.

And what has surprised me is even in the most cynical settings, even in the most bureaucratic settings, even in the most politically heated fights and debates, your voice, your leadership proven, tested, successful in Barbados and around the world; that your voice and your call for a more just future backed by a set of ideas that are real, that are tangible, that we know can make a tremendous difference. And just the power of your moral leadership has been one that has not just won over this room—although you’ve clearly won over this room—(laughter)—but I’ve seen it amongst heads of state around this planet, and with people who are likeminded and with people who are not likeminded. And it’s a reminder that at the end of the day leadership matters. And this place, the Council, is one that takes that concept very seriously, and we’re thrilled and honored to have a leader of your stature and your moral leadership capacity join us for this hour.

So thank you very much, Prime Minister Mottley.

MOTTLEY: Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you. I am—let me thank the Council for Foreign Relations for hosting us this evening. And let me just simply leave us with those principles of Ubuntu: I am because we are. I am because you are. If we don’t find common purpose, then I don’t know what will happen to us. But I know that in the past humans did, and we can as well. Thank you.

SHAH: Thank you. (Applause.)

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.