[This is an excerpt from an article in The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs and Policy Studies.] 

The Bridgetown Initiative: a contemporary framework for structural reform

The Bridgetown Initiative, named after the capital of Barbados where it was unveiled in July 2022 at the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP27, rests in large part on a moral argument that many of the countries most drastically affected by climate change are among the historically lowest carbon emitters – and that a rethink of the global financial system is needed to better meet the modern moment, including ending cycles of heavy debt burdens. ‘It sets out to make green and development financing more fair, accessible and affordable so that developing states can meet their climate obligations under the Paris Conventions and fund their development agendas under the Sustainable Development Goals’ (United Nations, Citationn.d.). This is against the backdrop of a decline in climate finance to SIDS by 25%; adaptation finance remains at 25%, significantly under the agreed amount. This was vehemently stated by Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados in her speech at COP26 in Glasgow (UN Climate Change, Citation2021). Since then, her speeches have helped to shape dialogue on climate action and climate financing.

In her 2021 speech, Mottley categorically linked the failure to provide critical finance and loss and damage to the loss of lives and livelihoods in SIDS. This is tied to the failure to deliver on the promises of the Paris Agreement and the nonchalant approach by key stakeholders, who were visibly missing from the meetings. She deems this immoral and unjust. For Mottley, this is a collective action problem and she made a rallying plea for cooperation because:

[O]ur people and our planet need it more than ever and we can work with those who are ready to go because the train is ready to leave and those who are not yet ready, we need to continue to ring circle and to remind them that their people need them to get on board as soon as possible. Code Red! Code Red! To the G7 countries, G20 countries. 1.5°C is what we need to survive. 2°C degrees is a death sentence. (UN Climate Change, Citation2021)

It is within this context that the Bridgetown Initiative (in its original and 2.0 iterations) is considered in this work. The main demands of the Bridgetown Initiative are liquidity support, debt sustainability, scaling up of development finance, restructuring the trading system to suit and systemic economic governance changes. The Initiative seeks to disrupt the status quo and reform the workings of development finance. It is hoped that the restructured global financial system would be more development friendly and assist vulnerable states as they face increasing climate disasters.

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The discussion in this article thus far highlights the manner in which the global financial system has failed to serve the interests of developing states. As presently constituted, development finance is not fit for purpose. Instead, it has exacerbated inequalities and economic marginalisation and has not adequately responded to the scale of current global challenges. The reform proposals are critical to Caribbean SIDS, which, according to the Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC), are

.. caught up in a vicious middle-income country debt-climate trap. The resources these small island states need to invest in climate resilience are increasingly being diverted to repay debts while borrowing costs are rising partly due to climate-related vulnerabilities, leading to more debt. At the end of 2023, six of the fourteen Caribbean countries of CARICOM ranked in the top 10 of the world’s most indebted SIDS…. (Citation2024, p. 12)

Caribbean states are left with little fiscal space in which to navigate their development. They resort to heavy borrowing, adding to their vulnerabilities. These challenges are tied to the inequalities embedded in the global financial architecture, hence the proposal for a multi-faceted response from the international community. There are certain limitations within the proposal that have been raised by civil society, including the Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC). This includes heavy reliance on private sector funding when it has not been forthcoming, as well as over-reliance on debt pause clauses; while these are helpful in the short term, debt servicing remains and keeps rising, due to accumulated interest and extended payment periods (CPDC, Citation2024).

Coloniality of power, a phrase coined by Anibal Quijano, offers a useful lens for understanding the persistence of colonial forms of domination and hierarchies that continue to shape contemporary global power relations and epistemic inequalities. This explains why proposals such as the Bridgetown Initiative, one emanating from the Global South and which reflects its grim realities, must navigate the existing global governance structures. It does not push boundaries but instead reflects an accommodation to coloniality premised on traditional hierarchies. The CPCD, as part of civil society, has pushed the boundaries beyond what is contained in the Bridgetown Initiative by advocating for comprehensive debt relief for the Caribbean SIDS through debt cancellation, debt forgiveness or debt restructuring as part of climate reparations and for Caribbean states to escape the debt-climate trap. Caribbean states view this trap as the cumulative emissions from developing states dating back to the industrial revolution, and colonial extraction to the present-day effects of the climate crisis on the Caribbean. Debt relief is compensation for centuries of environmental harm imposed by the Global North. While the Bridgetown Initiative avoids reparations discourse and focuses on restructuring the global governance architecture, civil society links debt justice to historical accountability as a basis for climate reparations. It locates economic inequality within the enduring structures of coloniality of power. Civil Society acknowledge that, even with full cancellation of debt, if the global financial architecture does not reform based on the Bridgetown Initiative’s proposals, Caribbean states will remain vulnerable.

Sandra Ochieng’-Springer, Department of Government, Sociology, Social Work and Psychology, University of the West Indies, Bridgetown, Barbados.