At the 80th United Nations General Assembly, Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister, the Honourable Gaston Browne urged world leaders to embrace bold climate finance reform and a fair energy transition, warning that vulnerable nations cannot continue to bear the highest costs of a crisis they did not create.
“The climate crisis is not a forecast for my people—it is a daily reality,” the Prime Minister declared. “Our shores retreat, storms intensify, droughts devastate. Justice demands that those who contributed most to this destruction pay their fair share for the solutions.”
The Prime Minister advanced a five-point plan for fair climate finance. He said that there should be the imposition of a global levy on the heaviest corporate and state emitters, with proceeds directed to adaptation, loss and damage, and resilience financing. In addition, he called for the operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund as promised—front-loaded, predictable, and disbursed on objective triggers so that help arrives “at the speed of need.”
Prime Minister Browne also called for the adoption of the MVI across all international financial institutions to determine concessional access based on vulnerability, not outdated income measures. In addition, he called for the extension of long repayment periods, low fixed rates, generous grace periods, and climate-resilient debt clauses that pause payments after verified shocks.
The country’s leader also stated that vulnerable states should be offered lending in domestic currencies to eliminate foreign-exchange penalties that deepen debt without delivering value.
“Debt swells and resilience stalls when we are forced to rebuild with expensive borrowing,” Prime Minister Browne stressed. “We need justice in finance—not charity. Fair terms for vulnerable nations are the minimum price of survival.”
