Led by Barbados PM Mia Mottley, the Bridgetown Initiative aims to unlock climate finance

By Kristine Liao

It’s become unbearably clear that climate change is here and it’s happening right now. Just a quick scroll through your news feed and you’ll likely see reports of extreme weather events happening all around the world – from drought in the Horn of Africa, to wildfires in Chile, to heatwaves across Asia, to flooding in eastern Africa. And that’s just from the first few months of this year.

While you might feel like climate change is a “far away” problem that won’t affect you, in reality, it’s going to impact all of us — and it’s going to happen sooner than you probably think.

But while all of us are at risk of the impacts of climate change, some parts of the world are more at risk than others.

It’s an inequality that became abundantly clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, with some countries able to rapidly access the financing and tools needed to tackle it and quickly bounce back, while others were left behind and continue to struggle with the pandemic’s impacts.

The same thing is happening now with climate change. It’s clear that wealthy countries aren’t immune to the impacts of climate-related disasters. But what sets wealthy countries apart from low-income countries, is that wealthy countries have the resources to respond and rebuild while low-income countries don’t.