Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda called for urgent international action to protect small island states from escalating climate and economic crises during his address at the United Nations.
Speaking before global leaders, Browne highlighted the profound economic and environmental challenges facing the world. “Global growth hovers at an average of 2.5%, far below what is needed to meet development and climate goals,” he said, warning that public debt has reached $97 trillion, with over half of low-income countries facing debt distress.
He described trade fragmentation, financial volatility, and increasingly frequent climate disasters as immediate threats, particularly for small island developing states (SIDS). “For SIDS, instability is not an abstract risk. It is lived reality,” he said, noting that climate-related disasters in 2024 alone destroyed $7 billion in assets across the region.
Browne warned that rising sea levels, projected to reach up to one metre according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), could threaten homes, ports, and entire cultures. He also highlighted the vulnerability of economies heavily reliant on tourism, which in some islands contributes over 40% of GDP.
“Families across all SIDS rebuild homes and schools at personal cost,” he said. “We cannot keep mortgaging our children’s future merely to survive today. Delay costs lives and livelihoods.”
The Prime Minister stressed the gap between global pledges and action. While agreements such as the Paris Climate Accord and the UN’s 2030 Agenda promise climate finance, social development, and reduced inequality, he said progress remains slow. “The problem is not vision, it is implementation,” he said.
Browne also outlined regional initiatives, including the establishment of a Debt Sustainability Support service (DSS) by the Antigua and Barbuda Gender for SIDS, which aims to restructure debt and direct financing into resilience projects. He announced that the first DSS transaction is expected to close by March 2026, with future sovereign debt contracts including climate-resilient clauses.
Calling for broader international support, he urged multilateral development banks and financial institutions to expand concessional financing, adopt vulnerability-based access, and implement automatic debt service pauses in the event of disasters. Browne also encouraged partnerships with philanthropy and private capital to fund resilient infrastructure, clean energy, and adaptation projects.
“State-contingent debt, climate-resilient clauses, and debt-for-nature swaps must become standard practice, not pilots,” he said, appealing for immediate global action to safeguard the futures of the world’s most vulnerable nations.
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I agree with prime minister Gaston calling on them to protect the mangrove in Barbuda that is butchered by PLH and the swamp been backfill to make golf course, you know under Gaston not even a scintiller of mangrove is in existence when he gave the whites people at PLH and YEDA the government permission to bulldoze the mangroves.