Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

For just over three years, Dr Car­la Bar­nett has been serv­ing as sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com).

The econ­o­mist be­came the eighth sec­re­tary-gen­er­al in Au­gust 2021 by unan­i­mous ap­point­ment of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com.

Giv­en the chal­lenges the Caribbean faces, her 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence would be an es­sen­tial tool in her kit. She had once served as deputy sec­re­tary-gen­er­al at the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at and deputy gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of Be­lize be­fore that.

From the grow­ing cli­mate cri­sis to the vi­o­lence in Haiti, Bar­nett is con­fronting a new chap­ter of trou­bles in Caribbean his­to­ry.

She trav­elled to COP29 in Baku, Azer­bai­jan, par­tic­i­pat­ing in sev­er­al meet­ings at the cli­mate con­fer­ence be­fore set­tling down to speak to Guardian Me­dia in a one-on-one in­ter­view at the Cari­com Pavil­ion on Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

The in­ter­view would take on three main themes: the cli­mate cri­sis, Haiti, and the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB).

Bar­nett: I re­main

to be con­vinced

As we spoke, thou­sands of cit­i­zens across Trinidad, Grena­da and Be­lize were clean­ing up in the af­ter­math of tor­ren­tial rain­fall, which led to wide­spread flood­ing. Many roads were in­un­dat­ed with wa­ter and be­came im­pass­able.

Like all oth­er Caribbean lead­ers and those rep­re­sent­ing Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS), Bar­nett be­lieves cli­mate fi­nance is crit­i­cal to help­ing an un­der-fi­nanced re­gion like the Caribbean bat­tle back against the changes in cli­mate due to glob­al warm­ing.

She out­lined the two out­comes she hopes for at COP29, “One is greater cer­tain­ty on the fi­nanc­ing that SIDS, in­clud­ing Cari­com, can count on to ad­dress the is­sues aris­ing, whether it’s the adap­ta­tion to what’s hap­pen­ing or mit­i­gat­ing the ef­fects. Loss and dam­age are sup­posed to be tak­ing on greater shape at this meet­ing. A lot has been com­mit­ted in the past. Not a lot has ac­tu­al­ly been de­liv­ered,” Bar­nett said.

Her sec­ond hope is that the largest emit­ters do the “right thing” and re­duce their emis­sions “be­cause for as long as they don’t ef­fec­tive­ly re­duce emis­sions, the cost to our coun­tries of ad­dress­ing chal­lenges re­lat­ed to cli­mate change in­creas­es.”

Bar­nett said the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty’s fail­ure to act at this COP means things will sim­ply con­tin­ue to get worse in the next year. This year Hur­ri­cane Beryl cre­at­ed his­to­ry as the strongest Ju­ly At­lantic hur­ri­cane on record, the ear­li­est Cat­e­go­ry 5 At­lantic hur­ri­cane on record, the ear­li­est 150-mph hur­ri­cane in any sea­son, and the first June Cat­e­go­ry 4 hur­ri­cane.

Hav­ing sat in sev­er­al meet­ings so far through­out COP29, Bar­nett ad­mit­ted that while she isn’t in­volved in the ne­go­ti­a­tions, the sen­ti­ment em­a­nat­ing out of the halls doesn’t give her a lot of rea­sons to be hope­ful.

She added, “It is dif­fi­cult to be op­ti­mistic at this time. I’m not in­volved in the nuts and bolts of the ne­go­ti­at­ing process it­self but based on the pub­lic com­ments, I am re­al­ly not see­ing a lot of will­ing­ness among the G20 to in­crease their am­bi­tion for emis­sion re­duc­tion to the lev­el that would be nec­es­sary for us to mit­i­gate that 1.5 de­grees that we are over­shoot­ing as we speak. I’m hop­ing as the con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues we may see more to give us greater op­ti­mism. At this stage, I re­main to be con­vinced.”

‘The fate of Haiti lies

with Haitians’

As the world turned its at­ten­tion this week to Azer­bai­jan for the an­nu­al glob­al cli­mate con­fer­ence, new chaos gripped Haiti.

Gar­ry Conille, Haiti’s in­ter­im prime min­is­ter, was oust­ed af­ter just six months. He was fired by the coun­try’s rul­ing coun­cil. On Tues­day, the Unit­ed States said it ac­knowl­edged the new­ly ap­point­ed Prime Min­is­ter Al­ix Di­di­er Fils-Aimé and the Tran­si­tion­al Pres­i­den­tial Coun­cil (TPC).

A day lat­er, the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion halt­ed all flights from the US to Haiti for a month af­ter three gun at­tacks in a day on planes de­part­ing from the Caribbean na­tion.

De­spite the un­fold­ing cri­sis, Bar­nett said Cari­com has re­mained in con­tact with its mem­ber state and con­tin­ues to work with those on the ground to hold Haiti’s first pres­i­den­tial elec­tions since 2016.

She said, “Haiti is a mem­ber of Cari­com, so we re­main en­gaged as far as we can, but as long as we un­der­stand that the sit­u­a­tion in Haiti is one that we can help through con­sul­ta­tions and dis­cus­sions and sup­port, but Haitians have to be in charge of how that is sort­ed through.”

There has been an in­crease in vi­o­lent gang war­fare since the as­sas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Jovenel Moïse in 2021. More than 3,600 peo­ple have been killed in Haiti since Jan­u­ary and more than 500,000 have had to leave their homes, ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions.

Bar­nett on CDB: A lot

of work to do

While the CDB as an or­gan­i­sa­tion does not fall un­der Cari­com, we talked to Bar­nett about the on­go­ing is­sues at the re­gion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion. Bar­nett her­self once served as vice pres­i­dent of op­er­a­tions at the CDB, as the first woman ap­point­ed in this po­si­tion.

In April, the for­mer pres­i­dent of the Bar­ba­dos-based bank, Dr Hy­gi­nus “Gene” Leon, re­signed with “im­me­di­ate ef­fect.”

He had been sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave since Jan­u­ary. In March, Cari­com lead­ers ex­pressed “im­mense con­cern” at Leon’s sus­pen­sion but stopped short of go­ing deep in­to the is­sue.

When asked about the on­go­ing de­vel­op­ments at the CDB in which a pres­i­dent is ex­pect­ed to be elect­ed this week, Bar­nett said, “It’s not some­thing that I can com­ment on ex­cept to say once a new pres­i­dent is elect­ed and in place, there is a lot of work to do.”

Guardian Me­dia's cov­er­age of COP29 from Baku is sup­port­ed by ANSA McAL.