Barbados PM launches blistering attack on rich nations at Cop27 climate talks

Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, has criticised industrialised nations for failing the developing world on the climate crisis, in a blistering attack at the Cop27 UN climate talks.

She warned of a billion climate refugees around the world by the middle of the century if governments failed to tackle the climate crisis.

Mottley is working with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, on an initiative to provide new means of finance to the developing world.

Macron used his speech to the Cop27 conference to insist that the war in Ukraine would not cause France to backslide on commitments to tackle the climate crisis.

He said the world had the tools it needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in clean energy and low-carbon technology.

Rishi Sunak, the current UK prime minister, refused to answer a question from the Guardian on whether the £11.6bn of UK overseas aid earmarked for climate finance in developing countries would be spent within the five-year timeframe originally promised. Some fear that he could try to reduce the budget by stretching the spending over a longer period.

Sunak also announced the extension of a global initiative to reverse deforestation by 2030, originally set up at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow.

Cop27 is likely to be a fraught and difficult fortnight of negotiations. Countries are meeting in the shadow of the war in Ukraine, a worldwide energy and cost of living crisis, and rising global tensions.

Poor countries suffering loss and damage want a financial mechanism that will give them access to funding when disasters such as hurricanes, floods and droughts strike, destroying their infrastructure and tearing apart their social fabric.

It is not likely that these talks will provide a final settlement on loss and damage, but countries are hoping for progress on ways of raising and disbursing finance.

Nabeel Munir, chief negotiator for the G77 plus China negotiating block, said loss and damage was one of the principal demands for almost all developing and climate vulnerable nations.