Climate Change Is Driving Poor Nations to Desperate Measures | The New Republic

Source: Climate Change Is Driving Poor Nations to Desperate Measures | The New Republic

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Climate-vulnerable countries are demanding that the international financial system represented by the World Bank and the IMF “become fit for climate and for our development ambitions,” V20 chair and Ghanian Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta said in his keynote address. Specifically, the bloc is calling for an overall reduction of debt levels across creditor classes, more flexibility from creditors, and ramped-up commitments from international institutions, including multilateral development banks, to finance climate adaptation. Along the lines of a proposal from Barbados’s Prime Minister Mia Mottley, they’ve also called on the IMF to issue additional special drawing rights, a basket reserve currency, and for wealthy countries to deliver on their still unmet $100 billion-per-year climate financing pledge, with funds balanced between mitigation and adaptation. 

Nonpayment would be a dramatic, painful, and desperate measure. V20 countries—representing 1.4 billion people—command just 5.3 percent of votes at the IMF, “which makes it easy to be ignored,” says Kevin Gallagher, director of the Global Development Policy Center. As world leaders head to the U.N. climate conference colloquially known as COP27 early next month, climate finance is likely to be a major issue. But the U.N. is just one venue where a mounting climate finance challenge will need to be tackled. “This is hurricane season for the global economy,” Gallagher adds, referring to the compounding crises facing middle- and low-income countries that “have really blasted their fiscal space in trying to cope with it.”