“I am calling for moral strategic leadership in what will become not just the battle of our lifetime but the battle of planet earth.”
These were the impassioned words of Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley which rang out at the Albert Luthuli Convention Centre in Durban yesterday afternoon as she delivered the 20th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture to a jam-packed house.
An attorney at law, Mottley has been active in the political life of Barbados for almost three decades and is the first female leader of that island country.
She recently won the United Nations 2022 Champion for Global Change Award to add to her many accolades.
Invoking the spirit of Madiba, she said that in any great battle, “each of us runs our leg of the relay” and in the battle against the climate crisis too, “the example of Madiba is the one I would want us to hold onto … as the values he exhibited and the moral compass he provides give both the strength and capacity to run this race, which is the greatest race humanity will require in any generation.”
While her focus was on the theme: “Social Bonding and Decolonisation in the Context of the Climate Crisis: Perspectives from the Global South”, she described the climate crisis as being embedded in a polycrisis also characterized by the fallout of “the awful pandemic”, and a global financial crisis, which she described as a cancer.
“We were still recovering from the financial crisis and the cancer of inflation and the cost of living when the pandemic came. I say cancer because you keep trying to run after it but you can’t catch up with it … We also found ourselves fighting for vaccine equity in the midst of these multiple crises.”
Again invoking the spirit of Mandela, she said the battle against the climate crisis will require some uncomfortable partnerships. “Today I want us to recognise that what is required of us will mean developing partnerships in places we may never have dreamt of going.” she said, but added that “while it is the collective action that has led the world to be where it is today,” there is “no doubt that those responsible are G20 nations - they are 80% responsible.”
She said that within that context, the “traditional colonial powers that benefited from the industrial revolutions and our blood and sweat and tears, are the ones that have effectively put the world in the position it is today”.
However, it is also up to “ordinary people to place pressure and participate in the advocacy that is going to make a difference” in a crisis that has consequences which are “multidimensional” and which include the loss of “life, livelihoods, dignity, shelter, family, and culture”.
She said we are going to keep seeing an increased number of climate migrants moving across the earth. “This is real and it is already with us,” she said.
Today I want us to recognise that what is required of us will mean developing partnerships in places we may never have dreamt of going
Referencing COP27 currently underway in Egypt, she said it is “not simply the commitments made on stage that matter but the capacity to deliver on those commitments.”
She said that the global south has “for too long been the place from which wealth is extracted while there is no drive to put back in.”
She also spoke out strongly against the disparity of terms on which global north countries can draw loans, compared to those in the global south.
“This disparity in treatment is one of the remaining consequences of the colonial order. Will we continue to be victims of a process that was supposed to be dismantled in the post war era, and we have to change the discourse not just about the climate crisis but the financial crisis that is preventing us from being architects of our own destiny rather than simply awaiting handouts from the global north,” she said, pointing out that “Greece could borrow at fraction of Ghana because one is in Europe and one is in Africa”.
She made a strong call to recognise that “ours is now the moment for the reconstruction of a new global deal and social compact”.
She ended off by saying that today it is up to us to recognise simply that if we don’t move now, there may not be much left of our planet.
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