Merchant: Climate Justice Fight Moving ‘Slowly but Surely’

Director of Communications within in Prime Minister’s Office Maurice Merchant says the fight for climate justice is moving “slowly but surely,” as Prime Minister Gaston Browne continues to press world leaders and financial institutions for urgent and enforceable action.

For more than a decade, Prime Minister Browne has been at the forefront of global climate negotiations, championing the cause of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and demanding that major polluting economies take responsibility for their role in the climate crisis.

Merchant acknowledged the frustrations of slow progress but said the Prime Minister’s persistence is ensuring that climate justice remains on the global agenda: “Slowly but surely, this is why the Prime Minister continues to push for it, so that it doesn’t die a natural death.”

Delivering a powerful keynote address to international leaders, Prime Minister Browne called for an enforceable and equitable transition from fossil fuels. He insisted that countries which have profited most from fossil-fuel-driven economies must now bear the costs of enabling climate justice.

On climate finance, the Prime Minister was blunt: existing funding for adaptation, resilience, and loss and damage remains “woefully inadequate.” He urged the restructuring of the global financial architecture to make polluters pay not through charity but through a binding “polluter-pays” principle. He cited projections that adaptation costs could soar to US$387 billion annually by 2030, while current funding mechanisms lag dangerously behind.

Nationally, Browne reaffirmed Antigua and Barbuda’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP), which provides a roadmap for resilience through data-driven risk mapping and institutional strengthening. He also pledged that the country’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) will accelerate its green and resilient transformation.