Prime Minister Gaston Browne:
Climate Justice, Survival and Sovereignty: From Advocacy to Action
For Small Island Developing States, climate change is not simply an environmental challenge. It is an existential threat, a development crisis and an assault on economic sovereignty.
Rising seas, intensifying hurricanes, prolonged droughts and coastal erosion threaten our homes, water supplies, food security, infrastructure and livelihoods.
They endanger not only our economies, but also our cultural heritage, territorial integrity and the rights of future generations.
The injustice is profound: countries that have contributed least to global greenhouse-gas emissions are among those suffering the most severe consequences.
Worse still, our countries are often compelled to borrow at high interest rates to rebuild after disasters we did little to cause. This is a double injustice that the international community must confront.
Antigua and Barbuda has worked to translate the concerns of vulnerable states into meaningful international action.
Through the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS, we have advanced a framework for resilient prosperity.
As co-chair of the expert panel that developed the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index, we have challenged the inadequacy of income alone as a measure of a country’s capacity to withstand shocks.
In addition, through the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law, together with Tuvalu, we have strengthened the role of international law, including through the 2024 advisory opinion of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. We also championed the ICJ advisory opinion led by Vanuatu.
Whereas, we have strengthened our advocacy utilizing these international mechanisms, we must continue to fight for results.
Our countries cannot achieve resilience while trapped in a cycle of expensive borrowing, disaster destruction and costly reconstruction.
Climate finance must be accessible, predictable and affordable.
We need grants, not as charity, but as compensation for climate injustice, to assist with adaptation and loss and damage, concessional financing, disaster-responsive debt arrangements and lending criteria that properly recognise structural vulnerability.
Renewable energy is equally essential.
Our countries have not only suffered from the effects of fossil fuel emissions, but in the volatility and escalation in their prices.
In 2026 alone, fossil fuel subsidies cost our country approximately 2.5 percent of GDP. Funds that could have been otherwise utilized in healthcare, education, agriculture, home construction and economic diversification.
Investment in solar power, wind energy, battery storage and resilient electricity grids is an absolute necessity.
Though capital intensive, they can reduce our dependence on imported fossil fuels, strengthen energy security and retain more economic value within our countries.
However, SIDS like Antigua & Barbuda need access to long term concessional funding mechanisms that will reduce borrowing costs and derisk these capital intensive investments in renewables.
Climate resilience is therefore, not merely environmental policy; it is economic transformation and an instrument of sovereignty.
As Antigua and Barbuda prepares to assume the Commonwealth Chair-in-Office following CHOGM in November 2026, we will utilize our best efforts to mobilise the Commonwealth’s collective influence to turn commitments into measurable action.
We intent serve as the catalyst to champion a practical programme for resilient infrastructure, affordable climate finance, clean-energy investment and accountability for commitments made.
At COP31 in Türkiye, we will also work alongside our Caribbean, Pacific and other vulnerable partners to demand stronger adaptation support, effective loss-and-damage arrangements, ambitious emissions reductions and fairer access to finance and technology.
Our leadership must be measured not by the eloquence of our declarations, but by the homes we protect, the livelihoods we secure and the opportunities we create for our people.
The survival and prosperity of small island states must not depend on charity, but a fair and empowering global financing architecture and access to technology.
They must be secured through climate justice, international solidarity and a fair global system that respects our sovereignty and protects our future.
This article was originally published by Antigua News Room. Read the original article here: Fuel subsidies cost Antigua and Barbuda 2.5% of GDP in 2026, PM reveals.