Minister of the Environment and National Beautification Adrian Forde has defended the just concluded overseas trips related to climate change taken by Prime Minister Mia Mottley and her team.This comes in light of criticism from the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) that the Prime Minister was spending taxpayers’ dollars on a large contingent for those trips but the country was not reaping the benefits. DLP Vice-President Paul Gibson raised the issue on Monday on a local radio programme.However, introducing a resolution on the Barbados Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan 2020 in Parliament on Tuesday, Forde dismissed the criticism while insisting that the overseas travel was benefiting Barbados and the rest of the region on the issue of climate change.Without naming Gibson, Forde said “I want today to say to those Barbadians who are making a lot of noises, because that is what it boils down to at the end of the day – talking ‘bout our Prime Minister travelling all over the world. When she is travelling all over the world she is able to augment confidence in organisations like the Convention of Biological Diversity and other United Nations organisations to say ‘we are going to put our financial strength behind small island developing states like Barbados’, because they have the confidence that we will execute our plans and our projects.”
