Caribbean Think Tank Calls for Global Financial Reform

A Caribbean think tank leader has called for urgent reform of the global financial system, arguing that entrenched inequalities and historical injustices continue to stifle the region’s development and climate resilience.

In a speech at the Caribbean Policy Development Centre’s (CPDC) latest regional launch, executive director Richard Jones called on global powers to dismantle discriminatory financial architectures and historical legacies.

He told an audience of delegates from 12 nations at the premiere of “Tides of Debt”, a CPDC documentary exploring the realities of sovereign debt, climate vulnerability and economic resilience across the Caribbean, Jones framed the region’s current economic and environmental struggles not as accidents of geography, but as the direct consequences of centuries of exploitation.

He stressed that the modern Caribbean can no longer remain silent under the weight of crises it had no part in creating.

“This launch comes at a moment when the Caribbean must speak with great clarity and confidence about the development future we deserve,” Jones said. “For too long our region has been asked to carry burdens we did not create. We did not create the climate vulnerability, but we are among those most exposed to its consequences. We did not create the global debt architecture, but we are constrained by it.”

He urged international bodies to stop viewing climate change purely through an environmental lens, asserting that climate justice and historical reparations are inextricably linked facets of the same systemic problem.

“Climate justice is not only about storms, sea level rise, droughts, floods, coral reefs, and rising temperatures—it’s about power,” Jones said. “It is about responsibility. It’s about who caused the crisis, who’s paying the price, and who has the resources to respond. Historically, reparations should not only be about the past. They are about the present and the future. They are about repairing the deep and lasting damage caused by centuries of enslavement, colonialism, resource extraction, racial exploitation, and economic dependency.”

A focal point of Jones’s address was the crippling cycle of climate-induced debt. He heavily criticised international financial systems that ignore the unique vulnerabilities of island states, trapping them in high-interest debt cycles just to survive natural disasters.

“The Caribbean cannot accept a global climate model where those least responsible for the crisis are forced to borrow to survive it,” he argued. “Loans cannot be the main answer to climate loss and damage. Debt cannot be the price of resilience. And small island developing states cannot continue to be told to become more resilient while the international financial system denies us the resources to do so fairly.”