is just one venue where a mounting climate finance challenge will need to be tackled. climate conference colloquially known as COP27 early next month, climate finance is likely to be a major issue. 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. Nonpayment would be a dramatic, painful, and desperate measure.

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. 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. And it ought to be a wake-up call for rich countries to put serious debt relief back on the table.Ĭlimate-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. It’s an indicator of just how dire circumstances have become. “The climate crisis is the debt crisis,” said Sara Jane Ahmed, finance advisor to the V20.Īhead of a meeting of V20 finance ministers that began this week in Geneva-scheduled to occur on the heels of International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington-former Maldives President Mohamad Nasheed suggested countries in the bloc might stop making payments on the $686.3 billion they owe, accounting for nearly 30 percent of those countries’ combined GDP.

As the Federal Reserve moves to raise interest rates in the name of combating inflation, V20 nations appear to be reaching a breaking point. Meanwhile, these poorer countries also face rising food and commodity costs, the devastating effects of Covid-19, and ongoing vaccine apartheid. The group of 58 climate-vulnerable countries known as the V20 have lost 20 percent of their combined gross domestic product this century due to climate damages, according to a recent report. As the United States and the world lurch toward a recession, the poorest and most vulnerable countries face a seemingly impossible set of circumstances.

Kate roberts desperate measures