"WASHINGTON — The World Bank meetings were supposed to be a first step in a new era of affordable loans for developing nations hard hit by climate change like Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s Barbados, one of many Caribbean islands battered by worsening hurricanes.
But if this was a new era, the World Bank meetings that closed Sunday in Washington left Mottley feeling much like she did in the old one — sidelined by wealthy nations that balked at either providing more money themselves or significantly changing the lending rules for existing funds. And increasingly, beyond angry.
“I get really furious,” Mottley said, when hearing “that people are not ready, or people want to kick the ball down the road.”
She spoke at sessions held by the non-profit Rockefeller Foundation in conjunction with the World Bank meetings, where Mottley and some African leaders detailed the growing human and financial cost of natural disasters that are growing more relentless as the climate warms: a record-breaking tropical storm that sat over southern Africa for days last month, killing hundreds; tens of thousands of deaths from years of failed rains in the Horn of Africa; a formal declaration from Italy this month of a refugee emergency."
Ellen Knickmeyer reports for the Associated Press April 17, 2023.
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