Barbados PM Mia Mottley wins UN’s top environmental award for defence of islands

Mia Mottley wins policy leadership prize on the all-women list for Champions of the Earth award in 2021

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley at the UN's climate change conference, Cop26, in Glasgow last month. PA

The prime minister of Barbados has been awarded the UN’s highest environmental honour for her work highlighting the threat from rising sea levels to small islands around the world.

Mia Mottley was described as a “driving force for climate action” across Latin America and the Caribbean who has set ambitious environmental targets for her country, including a fossil fuel-free electricity sector by 2030.

Rising temperatures and sea levels are affecting Barbados by shrinking its already-limited water supply, forcing villages to relocate from the coastline, and contaminating existing freshwater reserves with sea water.

The award marks the conclusion of a remarkable week for Ms Mottley who led the ceremonies as Barbados stopped pledging allegiance to the UK’s Queen Elizabeth II and became a republic for the first time in its history.

In recognition of her leadership, Ms Mottley was named as one of the four winners of the award, all women, announced on Monday by the UN’s Environment Programme.

The announcement came after Ms Mottley delivered a stark warning to the UN’s climate change conference in November, telling delegates that a 2ºC rise in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels would be a “death sentence” for nations such as Antigua, the Maldives, Fiji and Barbados.

“We do not want that dreaded death sentence,” she told the conference. “We have come here today to say try harder, try harder.”

She has been a harsh critic of wealthier countries for their failure to pay for the impact of climate change through the scale of their emissions.

“The moral position has always been that the polluter must pay,” she said last week.

“Now what's the reality? The G20 countries have contributed 80 per cent of greenhouse gases and have contributed virtually nothing” to help finance mitigation efforts.

She highlighted how central banks of the world’s wealthiest countries have injected $25 trillion into their economies to stimulate their economies and said that similar amounts were needed to adapt to climate change.

The Sea Women of Melanesia, a group in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands that trains local women to monitor the state of coral bleaching on some the world’s most endangered reefs, has also been declared the winner of UN environment award.

The other winners are, Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, the first wildlife vet of the Uganda Wildlife Authority and an authority on primates and diseases that spread from animals to humans, and Maria Kolesnikova, of Kyrgyzstan, an environmental activist who heads a group that monitors air quality in central Asia.

The award, instituted by UN environment programme in 2005, has been conferred on 101 groups and people, including 25 world leaders.

“As we enter into a decisive decade, to cut emissions and protect and restore ecosystems, Unep’s Champions of the Earth demonstrate that all of us can contribute,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN agency.

“This year’s Champions are women who not only inspire us, but also remind us that we have in our hands the solutions, the knowledge and the technology to limit climate change and avoid ecological collapse.”