In a world beset by rising temperatures, extreme weather patterns, and escalating natural disasters, the urgency of decisive action on climate change and the threat of future pandemics has never been more apparent. Both threats will affect us all. But the countries between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn -- including the Caribbean and Pacific states, and parts of Latin America, Africa, and Asia where another 40% of the global population lives -- are currently experiencing loss and damage four times greater than elsewhere.
As we navigate these daunting challenges, we must forge robust partnerships based on trust and respect. The global climate crisis can be tackled only with a global mobilisation. The Bridgetown Initiative, launched in Barbados last summer and recently updated, calls on us all to maximise our efforts to prevent and respond to climatic events and pandemics. We must invest now to avert higher costs later. The window is closing, and we must act before irreversible damage is visited on those who can least withstand it.
Our task is fourfold. We need to make the global financial system more shock-resistant. We need to unblock flows of private capital so that we can accelerate climate-change mitigation and medical research. We need to ramp up long-term, low-cost lending to governments so that they can make their citizens, communities, and countries more resilient to climate-related disasters and pandemics. And we need to find new non-debt resources to finance post-disaster reconstruction. The Bridgetown Initiative proposes urgent reforms to the global financial architecture to meet these objectives, and it calls for a tripling of concessional loans and grants to the world's poorest countries.
