Members of the Global Alliance for a Green New Deal including Nigerian legislators and others have written to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to take up Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s proposal to scale up finance for carbon-cutting projects in the developing world.
Pointing out that national plans to tackle the climate crisis are of little use without finance to back them, in a speech to World Leaders Summit at COP26, Mottley, called for the extension of $500 billion in Special Drawing Rights – each year for the next 20 years.
Now, as the IMF and the World Bank prepare for their Spring meetings in Washington DC, their first since the Barbadian Prime Minister made her proposal and hot on the heels of what may be the IPCC’s last warning to the world, the Global Alliance for a Green New Deal, a unique alliance of 27 parliamentarians from 22 nations from the United States to Nigeria, have called on the IMF to take up Mottley’ proposal.
“The world’s least developed countries need a massive boost in technical and financial support to achieve development and climate goals: expanding energy access, transitioning to renewable sources, protecting and enhancing biodiversity, safeguarding and enhancing indigenous lands, creating decent, green jobs and building resilience against the impacts of the climate and nature crises already battering them.
The letter comes just days after the IPCC’s Working Group III report made clear both the urgency with which the world must act if we are to keep within 1.5 degrees of global heating, and just how far financial flows fall short of the levels needed to achieve emissions-cutting goals across all sectors and regions.
“The IPCC couldn’t have been clearer; we have run out of last chance saloons and must act now to rapidly reduce emissions. The technologies to harness the abundant energy from wind, waves and sun that can keep us within 1.5C exist – what is lacking is the political will.
The IMF was formed almost 80 years ago to encourage international collaboration and reconstruction in the aftermath of the second world war. Now it faces what is arguably its greatest challenge since that moment: the international financial system must deliver now for those on the front line of the climate crisis, or it is not fit for purpose in the twenty-first century.
The lawmakers urged the IMF to act, stating: “As a collaborative international community, we can only respond effectively to the climate and nature crises if we work together – recognising, as we do, that they are inextricably linked to intolerable levels of inequality within and between nations. Not only do we have a moral duty to support those nations least responsible for the interlinked climate and nature crises faced by humanity; we have a common, vested interest in supporting the transition to a habitable planet.”
The Alliance aims to add momentum to stalled, slow and insufficient international processes. They discuss global issues like trade and finance in a fora that brings together members from the global South and North in a spirit of solidarity and collaboration and gather at key global moments to urge global leaders to further and deeper action. It is the only such Alliance that we know of to bring politicians from the global South and North together in a single grouping.
