Barbados PM launches blistering attack on rich nations at Cop27 climate talks

Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, has criticised industrialised nations for failing the developing world on the climate crisis, in a blistering attack at the Cop27 UN climate talks.

She warned of a billion climate refugees around the world by the middle of the century if governments failed to tackle the climate crisis.

Mottley is working with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, on an initiative to provide new means of finance to the developing world.

Macron used his speech to the Cop27 conference to insist that the war in Ukraine would not cause France to backslide on commitments to tackle the climate crisis.

He said the world had the tools it needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in clean energy and low-carbon technology.

Rishi Sunak, the current UK prime minister, refused to answer a question from the Guardian on whether the £11.6bn of UK overseas aid earmarked for climate finance in developing countries would be spent within the five-year timeframe originally promised. Some fear that he could try to reduce the budget by stretching the spending over a longer period.

Sunak also announced the extension of a global initiative to reverse deforestation by 2030, originally set up at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow.