Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley
Illustration by Jaya Nicely
A Prime Minister Tries to Storm-Proof Her Island’s Finances
Growing up in Barbados, Mia Mottley lived through the effects of climate change. Now she’s devising ways of shielding the nation’s budget from weather-related ruin.
Mia Mottley’s gravelly voice rang with urgency. Standing at the podium at the United Nations, the prime minister of Barbados was warning of the dangers her island faced as storms swollen by warmer oceans tore through the Caribbean. “This is a matter of life or death for us,” she said.
It was late September 2018 hurricane season and Barbados was flooding. A tropical storm threatened neighboring St. Lucia. On the other side of the globe, a typhoon took aim at Japan. The confluence of disasters was almost unthinkable. Almost. “This is not a science fiction movie,” Mottley said. “This is not a cartoon. And if I ever thought that it was a fantasy, what transpired in the last 24 hours across the different poles of the world has reminded me that it is not.”