We need serious conversations on finance at the intersection of trade, climate and sustainable development

A statement by Hon. Kerrie D. Symmonds, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Barbados, delivered at the Global Review of Aid for Trade 2024. The speech critiques the 18-year history of the Aid for Trade initiative, arguing that its original assumptions failed to account for the volatility of development gradients, the climate crisis, and the extreme vulnerability of small island developing states.

• The Aid for Trade initiative, launched at the 2005 Hong Kong WTO Ministerial Conference, aimed to increase inclusivity for developing and least developed countries, reduce trade-related adjustment costs, and improve supply side capacities for lower-income economies, small island developing states, small vulnerable economies, and least developed countries. However, the issue of capacity remains a persistent challenge in 2024.
• The original 2005 assumptions of the Aid for Trade initiative—specifically that the development gradient would be constant and capacity building would eventually reduce the need for aid—were incorrect. External shocks, such as the pandemic, caused significant regressions; for example, the 14 CARICOM small island developing states saw GDP declines between 11% and 21% during the pandemic.
• Current global financial pressures on traditional donor countries, such as the European Union's need to increase defense budgets by 18% to 20% due to the war in Ukraine and a requirement to find $800 billion to close public finance gaps, threaten the sustainability of Aid for Trade disbursements, which have totaled $648 billion over 18 years.
• Barbados proposes the Bridgetown initiative to mobilize new financing through blended finance and private sector mechanisms, including debt-for-equity and debt-for-nature swaps, to address the intersection of trade and the climate crisis.
• There is a critical need to reclassify eligibility for concessional and long-term financing. Current systems often disqualify countries based on GDP improvements while ignoring persistent vulnerabilities; for instance, a single climatic event in the Caribbean can reduce a country's GDP by 24% in five hours.

APA

Symmonds, K. D. (2024). We need serious conversations on finance at the intersection of trade, climate and sustainable development. Forum on Trade, Environment, & the SDGs. https://tessforum.org/latest/we-need-serious-conversations-on-finance-at-the-intersection-of-trade-climate-and-sustainable-development

Chicago

Symmonds, Kerrie D. We need serious conversations on finance at the intersection of trade, climate and sustainable development. Forum on Trade, Environment, & the SDGs, 2024. https://tessforum.org/latest/we-need-serious-conversations-on-finance-at-the-intersection-of-trade-climate-and-sustainable-development.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |last1=Symmonds |first1=Kerrie D. |title=We need serious conversations on finance at the intersection of trade, climate and sustainable development |publisher=Forum on Trade, Environment, & the SDGs |date=28 June 2024 |url=https://tessforum.org/latest/we-need-serious-conversations-on-finance-at-the-intersection-of-trade-climate-and-sustainable-development |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{symmonds2024need, author = {Symmonds, Kerrie D.}, title = {{We need serious conversations on finance at the intersection of trade, climate and sustainable development}}, publisher = {Forum on Trade, Environment, \& the SDGs}, year = {2024}, month = jun, url = {https://tessforum.org/latest/we-need-serious-conversations-on-finance-at-the-intersection-of-trade-climate-and-sustainable-development}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }