World Bank and IMF annual meetings press briefing

Steering the world away from crisis and building a system that works for all

Behind the scenes during seminar for the AM22 at the International Monetary Fund in Washington. Photo by International Monetary Fund on Flickr. Photo by International Monetary Fund on Flickr.

07 Oct 2022

Watch the video – annual meetings press briefing

Ahead of the World Bank and IMF Annual meetings, this E3G and ONE Campaign high-level press briefing laid out the challenges and solutions needed to address the converging crises.

Panel

00:00 Ronan Palmer, Association Director, Clean Economy at E3G.
03:26 Gayle Smith, CEO of the ONE Campaign
08:02 Sunny Morgan, Debt for Climate
13:26 Jean-Paul Adam, Director, Climate Change, Natural Resource Management and Technology at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
19:35 Journalist questions

A domino effect has compounded an already precarious situation. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused a rise in energy prices and food insecurity, tightening monetary policy in developed economies has now put many low-income countries at high risk of debt distress. This has been combined with increased threats from climate change and more frequent extreme weather events, which are now regularly causing devastating impacts in both low and middle-income countries (as evidenced in Pakistan).

The energy security crisis has already led many countries, in both North and South, to use this moment as an opportunity to accelerate their investment in renewable energy and to seek to become more energy self-sufficient. However, the current international financial system isn’t delivering the resources needed to meet the urgent needs of the moment.

The panel discussed how the ‘Bridgetown Agenda’ set out by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley at the UN General Assembly last week can help to mobilise finance at the scale needed for climate and development resilience in the short, medium and long term through:

Lending an additional $1 trillion for climate and development resilience by pushing the multilateral development banks to optimise their balance sheets.
Fixing the common framework, to ensure for those countries in debt distress have a path forward with creditors.
Instituting natural disaster and pandemic clauses to tackle the debt crisis – Meeting the existing SDR requirements of recycling $100bn.
Maintaining concessional finance.