Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley has lashed out at rich countries over their failure to help developing nations cope with the climate crisis.
Speaking at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday, Mottley said that “we [developing countries] were the ones whose blood, sweat and tears financed the industrial revolution”.
“Are we now to face double jeopardy by having to pay the cost as a result of those greenhouse gases from the industrial revolution? That is fundamentally unfair,” she said.
The Barbados prime minister also argued that there would be a billion climate refugees across the world by the middle of the century if the governments failed to tackle the climate crisis.
The remarks came after Egyptian Foreign Minister and COP27 president Sameh Shoukry said on Sunday that “African countries suffer greatly from the effects of climate change without being major contributors to this problem”.
He added that African countries need assistance to adapt to climate change, and that it is important to provide them with modern technological solutions and funding to mitigate the negative effects of the rising global temperatures.
Shoukry was echoed by Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, who insisted that the G20 nations are the main contributors to the problem, accounting for as much as 80% of emissions.
Developing Nations Oppose Their Soil Becoming Western Junkyard
Rich countries have never thought twice before using developing nations to implement their climate change-related goals. The past few years have seen more poor countries stand up against West’s policy of sending its toxic waste for disposal to Africa and the Asia Pacific region.
The developing nations accuse the West of violating the UN-administered Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal that was adopted in 1989.
What’s more, the so-called Basel Ban Amendment, adopted by the Basel Convention parties in 1995, prohibits the export of hazardous wastes from EU members, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and Liechtenstein to poorer countries, whether for recycling or not.
Earlier this year, the local environmental watchdog group BAN Toxics called on Manila to speed up its ratification of the Basel Ban Amendment, warning that otherwise, the Philippines risks being turned into the toxic waste dump of the world.
The warning came after a shipment of garbage from Canada was found at the Manila International Container Port in January 2014, in what became the most notorious incident of foreign waste dumping in the Philippines.
In a separate development, rich countries tend to relocate their carbon emissions-rich production to the world’s poorest countries, something that reflects developed nations’ desire to avoid sticking to their environmental legislations.