Belém, Brazil / St. John’s, Antigua and Barbuda – Friday, 7 November 2025…….At the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, the Honourable Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, delivered a commanding address urging the international community to act with honesty, courage, and urgency in the face of the escalating climate crisis.
Speaking on behalf of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), Prime Minister Browne declared that the 1.5 °C threshold remains the world’s lifeline, and warned that the failure of major emitters to act decisively is driving the planet toward catastrophe.
“For small island states, the climate crisis is not past tense or future tense; it is our lived reality,” Prime Minister Browne told delegates.
“We have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Yet large polluters continue to deliberately destroy our marine and terrestrial environments with their poisonous fossil fuel gases. We must stand as one and fight unrelentingly to stop this ecocide — to build economies that serve humanity, not just profits.”
The Prime Minister emphasized that the world has already reached 1.5 °C of warming, the very limit that nations vowed to avoid, but reaffirmed that “we cannot and will not surrender 1.5 degrees.”
He called for an economic revolution — a transformation in the way the world produces, consumes, trades, and invests — centred on human survival and planetary stability.
Citing the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa, which recently ravaged parts of the Caribbean, Prime Minister Browne reminded leaders that loss and damage is not theory but tragedy:
“Loss and damage must be recognized as the unavoidable cost of inaction — the bill that nature is now presenting to humanity. In Antigua and Barbuda, we know this pain. Hurricane Irma left our sister island Barbuda a mangled wreck in 2017, destroying lives and livelihoods overnight. Yet we rebuilt from the rubble with resilience and resolve.”
He urged immediate reform of the international financial architecture, declaring that “climate finance is not charity; it is climate justice.”
“Those who caused this crisis must lead in fixing it,” he said. “We must move beyond outdated ODA rules and adopt the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index to direct support where it is most needed — toward mitigation, adaptation, recovery, and resilience.”
Prime Minister Browne commended Brazil for hosting COP30 “in the heart of the Amazon — the lungs of the Earth,” and welcomed the launch of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility as “a bold symbol of global solidarity.”
Reaffirming Antigua and Barbuda’s commitment to leadership among small states, he concluded:
“At this COP of Truth, let us make this the moment when honesty met action, when ambition became transformation, and when climate justice moved from promise to practice.
We will continue to fight unrelentingly to protect our planet and human civilization from extinction.”
