Mia Mottley makes a case for Ambitious boost in Climate Funding; proposes $350 Billion a Year

Garfield Ekon

Staff Writer

Baku, Azerbaijan, November 22, 2024 – A leading voice on finding resources to mitigate against Climate Change, Prime Minister of Barbados, Hon. Mia Mottley is calling for countries to further examine innovative sources of finance to tackle the malady.

At COP29, she proposed that the placing of levies on shipping companies, airlines, and some financial traders, as well as taxing fossil fuel extraction, as they could raise at least $350 billion a year, more than three times the amount rich nations mobilise annually through public sources.

The proposals are part of the PM’s continuation campaign to raise more Climate finance that started under the Bridgetown Initiative, in 2022.  “These decisions are not beyond us politically,” Mottley said in Baku on Tuesday.  “The elephant in the room for financial services cannot continue to be avoided, even if we have been unsuccessful in the past,” she said.

Speaking alongside Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, whose country was recently battered by deadly floods, as well as the Europe Union’s Climate Commissioner and members of the Global Solidarity Levies Taskforce, she said “the reality is that these extreme weather events that the world is facing daily suggest that humanity and the planet are hurtling towards catastrophe.

“The extreme weather requires from us a serious commitment at this COP with respect to new collective, quantified goals that enable us to reverse the current trajectory and to fund mitigation, adaptation, and, of course, loss and damage,” the PM argued.

Other calls made at the Conference include: more expansive business class flights being levied, also on stock and bond trades and a $5-a-ton tax on fossil fuel emissions, to raise much needed cash to battle Climate Change.
Barbados, France, and Kenya are leading the fight to make sure that polluters pay, while also trying to get the financial sector to free up more resources.

It will be a major featured discussion at the COP30, to be discussed in Brazil, next year.