Nimco Ali
EVENING STANDARD
Tue, 27 June 2023 
(Daniel Hambury/@stellapicsltd)
At a drinks event before President Macron’s recent climate summit in Paris, the new Barbadian High Commissioner to London told me a startling fact: his country’s entire GDP could be wiped out by a single hurricane in just four hours.
Milton Innis’s words were ringing in my ears from the moment the opening ceremony began. His Prime Minister, Mai Mottley, was a co-chair of the summit for a New Global Financing Pact. Her island nation and others like it are on a knife edge, at the brutal front line of our climate crisis — as her High Commissioner’s words had brutally illustrated.
Such destructive hurricanes are now coming to the Caribbean more and more frequently. So fair play at least to Macron for taking the lead and convening an impressive line-up of people to talk about it in Paris.
The summit, though, was a failure. And it’s one that should shame the West. Yes, there were successes on positive reforms, progress on debt and Prime Minister Mottley’s natural disaster ‘pause’ clauses (whereby loan repayments can be temporarily halted following natural disasters). But people in the global south — and our planet — need much more than that.
Private-sector leaders — who I suppose at least bothered to turn up unlike many of the G7 leaders — chose to read off statements and ask pointless questions. I wish I could say I was surprised but sadly I was not.
Rich countries are reluctant to engage with the global south’s demands despite saying they care about those issues and convening summits on them.
At this latest summit, where developing nations called for a “transformation” of the world’s financial system, western countries offered tweaks. One world leader told me in the breakout room “what they are offering and what we are asking for does not match”.
But turbocharging reform to lock in the trillions of dollars required to tackle climate change has to be priority number one for our age. The relationship between developing countries and developed countries has to change.
What is needed is true partnership. The UK under Theresa May tried that with the African investment summit, a commitment which has since been derailed by Covid and the war in Ukraine.
Macron tried with this summit, but the elephant in the room was the US and its inability under either the Democratic or Republican Party to step up and deliver real change. That failure impacted how many of the private-sector companies in the room behaved.
The next moment for real change will be the G20 in September where the UK and US, who were missing in action at this critical summit, can redeem themselves.
It will take a lot of effort — and serious diplomatic work behind the scenes — but the consequences of failure are not worth thinking about. Hurricanes that wipe out an entire nation’s GDP would be just the start.
Tue, 27 June 2023
(Daniel Hambury/@stellapicsltd)
At a drinks event before President Macron’s recent climate summit in Paris, the new Barbadian High Commissioner to London told me a startling fact: his country’s entire GDP could be wiped out by a single hurricane in just four hours.
Milton Innis’s words were ringing in my ears from the moment the opening ceremony began. His Prime Minister, Mai Mottley, was a co-chair of the summit for a New Global Financing Pact. Her island nation and others like it are on a knife edge, at the brutal front line of our climate crisis — as her High Commissioner’s words had brutally illustrated.
Such destructive hurricanes are now coming to the Caribbean more and more frequently. So fair play at least to Macron for taking the lead and convening an impressive line-up of people to talk about it in Paris.
The summit, though, was a failure. And it’s one that should shame the West. Yes, there were successes on positive reforms, progress on debt and Prime Minister Mottley’s natural disaster ‘pause’ clauses (whereby loan repayments can be temporarily halted following natural disasters). But people in the global south — and our planet — need much more than that.
Private-sector leaders — who I suppose at least bothered to turn up unlike many of the G7 leaders — chose to read off statements and ask pointless questions. I wish I could say I was surprised but sadly I was not.
Rich countries are reluctant to engage with the global south’s demands despite saying they care about those issues and convening summits on them.
At this latest summit, where developing nations called for a “transformation” of the world’s financial system, western countries offered tweaks. One world leader told me in the breakout room “what they are offering and what we are asking for does not match”.
But turbocharging reform to lock in the trillions of dollars required to tackle climate change has to be priority number one for our age. The relationship between developing countries and developed countries has to change.
What is needed is true partnership. The UK under Theresa May tried that with the African investment summit, a commitment which has since been derailed by Covid and the war in Ukraine.
Macron tried with this summit, but the elephant in the room was the US and its inability under either the Democratic or Republican Party to step up and deliver real change. That failure impacted how many of the private-sector companies in the room behaved.
The next moment for real change will be the G20 in September where the UK and US, who were missing in action at this critical summit, can redeem themselves.
It will take a lot of effort — and serious diplomatic work behind the scenes — but the consequences of failure are not worth thinking about. Hurricanes that wipe out an entire nation’s GDP would be just the start.
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