Mottley told Lagarde that Barbados was prepared to do voluntarily what most countries have to be coerced to do: cut its budget and raise taxes. Mottley knew that banks and investors would work with her only if Barbados were participating in a formal IMF program for economic reform - and it had to start immediately. The IMF is both the assessor and the enforcer of global economic policy, the de facto gatekeeper to the world’s capital markets. She wanted Lagarde’s support in persuading them to renegotiate its terms. Barbados, she said, was going to default on the debt it owed to private banks and investors. With Lagarde on the phone, Mottley made her pitch. The two friends were joined by the principals of a little-known but influential London financial firm called White Oak Advisory - Sebastian Espinosa and David Nagoski - debt experts who had developed a novel contractual clause to protect countries from at least some of the economic consequences of climate-driven catastrophes. Morgan and State Street Bank, was deeply knowledgeable about development finance. Persaud, who went on to lead research departments at J.P. Beside her in the anteroom was her adviser Avinash Persaud, a close friend since the days when they each studied at the London School of Economics, where she received her law degree in 1986. She was groomed at the island’s elite girls’ academy, Queen’s College, and at the private United Nations International School in New York. Her grandfather was the mayor of Bridgetown her father served as the country’s consul general to the United States. Having descended from two generations of elite politicians, Mottley had learned, though, that important decisions at large organizations are made at the top. Mottley’s insistence on speaking directly with Lagarde - she had been pushing for the meeting for nearly a week while Lagarde’s office demurred - was an unorthodox way to approach the leader of one of the world’s dominant economic institutions. For Mottley, this meant the money she needed the IMF to help her recoup wasn’t just for her people’s prosperity but for their survival. It was already obvious that every climate crisis was an economic crisis but going forward, she realized, every economic crisis would effectively be a climate crisis. The storms revealed that even the most heroic economic planning could be laid to waste in a moment. In Mottley’s view, that obliteration was “like a nuclear event.” It was increasingly clear that climate change would make all the projects that Barbados already could not afford more necessary - and more expensive. Credit:Įrika Larsen/Redux, for The New York Times Sargassum seaweed, which thrives in warming oceans, is overtaking a beach in Barbados. Then, nine months before voting day, that plan took on new urgency as two powerful hurricanes ripped through the Caribbean 12 days apart they missed Barbados, but one of them obliterated nearby Dominica. Mottley, the first woman to lead Barbados, had been working toward this conversation for nearly two years, consulting expert financial and legal advisers to develop a plan that would restructure the country’s soaring debts in a way that would free up money to invest in Barbados’ economy. There was another way, Mottley said, but she needed Lagarde’s help. Soon the nation would have no choice but to declare itself insolvent, instigating a battle with the dozens of banks and creditors that held its $8 billion in debt and triggering austerity measures that would spiral the island into further poverty. It was so broke that it was taking out new loans just to pay the interest on the old ones, even as its infrastructure was coming undone. Mottley got to the point: Barbados was out of money. Fact-based, independent journalism is needed now more than ever.
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