Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley has been awarded the United Nations’ highest environmental honor, 2021 Champions of the Earth Award, for her policy leadership.
Mottley heads the first entirely female selection of awardees; the others were recognized for their work on coral bleaching in the Pacific, protecting wildlife health in Uganda, and entrepreurship in Kyrgystan.
When the Barbadian Prime Minister spoke to world leaders at the UN General Assembly earlier this year, she decried the “faceless few” pushing the world towards a climate catastrophe and imperiling the future of small-island States, like her own.
“Our world knows not what it is gambling with, and if we don’t control this fire, it will burn us all down,” she said in September. Drawing on the lyrics of Jamaican reggae great Bob Marley, she demanded, “Who will get up and stand up for the rights of our people?”
“I think that the combination of the pandemic and the climate crisis has presented a perfect political moment for human beings to pause and really examine what it is we are doing,” Mottley said. “What I really, really want in this world is for us to be able to have a sense of responsibility towards our environment, but also to the future generations.”
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Her impassioned speech would grab headlines around the world. Mottley has spent years campaigning against pollution, climate change, and deforestation, turning Barbados into a frontrunner in the global environmental movement.
Under her leadership, Barbados has adopted ambitious renewable energy targets, committing to a fossil-fuel free electricity sector and transport by 2030. Her vision is for most homes on the island to have solar panels on the roof and an electric vehicle out front.
At the same time, Barbados is implementing numerous conservation and restoration projects, from forests, through cities, to the coastline and the ocean.
Mottley also co-chairs the One Health Global Leaders’ Group on Antimicrobial Resistance.
“Prime Minister Mottley has been a champion for those who are most vulnerable to the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity and nature loss, and pollution and waste” said Inger Andersen, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP. “Her passionate advocacy and policy achievements are prime examples of how world leaders can take bold, urgent action on environmental issues.”
Mottley, who has said she finds inspiration in the forests that cover nearly 20 percent of Barbados, has also overseen a national strategy to plant more than one million trees, with participation from the entire population. The plan aims to foster food security and build resilience to a changing climate.
