“Five ways to align debt with climate and development goals”: Katie Gallogly-Swan, Rebecca Ray and B. Alexander Simmons from the Boston University Global Development Policy Center published an Op-Ed on the web presence of the “World Economic Forum” quoting the DRGR project.
Prior to the virtual meeting of 40 world leaders around Earth Day, the concept of debt relief for a green and inclusive recovery played a prominent role in numerous articles. Still, the White House itself seems to have missed the opportunity to address it appropriately.
Moritz Kraemer, Senior Advisor to the Debt Relief for a Green and Inclusive Recovery Project and contributor to our report, highlighted that “the vast majority of sovereigns will suffer from climate change in a way that their ratings will be cut.”
In the midst of the annual Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group, the NY Times published an article on the “systemic risk” debt and climate change pose on the world economy, quoting the DRGR proposal.
As reported by Reuters, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said “green debt swaps have the potential to spur accelerated action on climate change in developing countries”, announcing appropriate instruments by November.
“Nature”, a weekly international journal distributing peer-reviewed research, published an analysis that warns against the risks of a severe debt crisis if climate change is not taken into account when governments lend money during the pandemic. The text suggests three steps that match the DRGR proposal.
In the paper “Climate, COVID-19, and the Developing Country Debt Crisis” the research institute for climate policy examines the potential of climate-for-debt swaps and ways to define possible candidates.
As the International Monetary Fund plans to inject $650 billion into the global economy, Climate Home News recaps the recent developments in the plea for financial support for vulnerable nations, referring to the DRGR proposal.
The COVID-19 crisis has come at the worst possible time for humanity. The poorest countries were already struggling to meet their development goals in the face of cyclones, wildfires, and droughts, and the world now has only a decade left to slow down increases in global temperature and sea levels before they become catastrophic, and invest in climate-resilient development.
Transcript of the video provided by Gordon Brown, United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, for the launch of the report “Debt relief for a Green and Inclusive Recovery”
This conference today is of utmost importance, and in the month that we have found that we have an American president committed to net carbon zero by 2050 and a Chinese president committed to net carbon zero by 2060, this meeting is of great global significance as we fashion the new building blocks to take us there.