By Pe­ter Christo­pher

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

In Wash­ing­ton DC

Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley is seek­ing to turn Caribbean debt in­to a re­source for cru­cial de­vel­op­ment and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

In Ju­ly, Bar­ba­dos en­tered in­to an deal with the Eu­ro­pean In­vest­ment Bank (EIB) and In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) to pro­vide a US$300 mil­lion debt guar­an­tee. Un­der the arrange­ment, the sav­ings from the debt swap will be used to fund projects that im­prove wa­ter sup­ply and se­cu­ri­ty, and re­duce pol­lu­tion.

The Bar­ba­di­an Prime Min­is­ter, who is set to be­come the next chair of Cari­com short­ly, said she will pitch a sim­i­lar ap­proach to oth­er mem­ber states when she takes up that role.

She ex­plained the move as a speak­er dur­ing a ses­sion en­ti­tled 'Cli­mate Voic­es: Cat­alyz­ing Pri­vate Fi­nance - Bar­ba­dos' Debt for Cli­mate Con­ver­sion' at the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund an­nu­al meet­ing in Wash­ing­ton DC on Tues­day.

" Then we would be able to dis­cuss with mem­ber states the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a re­gion­al debt swap, and it may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be on cli­mate alone, but if we are true to walk the walk and be­liev­ing that we can't choose be­tween peo­ple and plan­et, then we need to al­so bring the SDGs to the ta­ble. And there may well be, as the IDB is dis­cussing with the Ba­hamas, debt for so­cial whether it is ed­u­ca­tion or health or cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty,"said Mot­t­ley.

The Bar­ba­di­an prime min­is­ter de­tailed plans to use her coun­try's debt to lever­age the de­vel­op­ment of a wa­ter treat­ment fa­cil­i­ty which would help ad­dress Bar­ba­dos' peren­ni­al wa­ter sup­ply con­cerns.

"We have to be able to deal with the fact that wa­ter is where my coun­try has the great­est chal­lenge with the cli­mate cri­sis, day in and day out. The first six months are drought. The sec­ond six months are flood­ing be­cause of con­vec­tion rain, and at the same time, we have dif­fi­cul­ties be­ing able to deal with our sewage and be­ing able to en­sure that there's ad­e­quate wa­ter for ir­ri­ga­tion in cer­tain parts of the coun­try," said Mot­t­ley, who said a dis­cus­sion with the In­ter Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank prompt­ed the de­ci­sion to take a dif­fer­ent ap­proach than pre­vi­ous debt re­struc­tur­ing plans.

"It there­fore be­came clear that if we took the same ap­proach, but change as­pects of it, that we took with the blue bonds that we is­sued the year be­fore, where we did a debt for na­ture swap and use the sav­ings over a 15-year pe­ri­od to fi­nance the Ma­rine Con­ser­va­tion Trust. That we could look at this as a start­ing point. But there are two ma­jor dif­fer­ences. One, scale that this one is sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er. And two, that in­stead of tak­ing the mon­ey drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, over the 15 -year pe­ri­od, we're tak­ing the funds up front to build out the new treat­ment fa­cil­i­ty for wa­ter on our South Coast," said Mot­t­ley.