NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Nations like The Bahamas which are vulnerable to the effects of climate change are ‘pledge fatigued’, Prime Minister Philip Davis asserted yesterday, as he called for action and for industrialized countries that contribute significantly to carbon emissions to ‘pay the bill’.
Davis appeared yesterday along with Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director for the International Monetary Fund, and David Malpass, the president of the World Bank Group during a New York Times Climate Week panel discussion.
He noted that The Bahamas has been impacted by several hurricanes which have contributed to more than 40 percent of the country’s debt levels.
The Prime Minister noted that despite pledges from industrialized countries to provide less wealth and more vulnerable nations with funding to aid in the climate change fight, not much has materialized.
In 2009, at the fifteenth conference of the parties (COP 15) of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, climate finance funding of $100 billion a year by 2020 was agreed upon. Davis noted that commitment was largely unfulfilled.
“We who are most vulnerable are pledged fatigued. We need action. We need to find ways and means to have the industrialized world and countries who have been burning fossil fuel for centuries that have this cloud of carbon in the air, it’s time for us to have them pay the bill.”
Davis noted that regional leaders last month during the Caribbean Regional Heads of Government Meeting in Preparation for the United Nations Climate Change Conference of The Parties 27 (COP 27) agreed to propose a two percent tax on all global oil exports which would be placed in a fund to assist vulnerable countries.
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