Stiglitz "said rich countries should support the creation of $300bn of #IMF special drawing rights (SDRs) each year to finance a global green transition."
But the devil is in the details: if this money comes in the shape of high interest loans that's not helping developing countries, that's loansharking.
Ask South Korea what the IMF did for them in the wake of the 1997 financial crisis. The strings attached to the IMF "bailout" were far reaching and upended the whole country's labour relations, causing its own crisis.
Inequality soared (see GINI coefficient, below). It has never recovered from the IMF intervention.
South Korea has joined a coalition of southeast Asian nations that have agreed to bail each other out.
When Janet Yellen sneezes, countries don't just catch a cold: they go bankrupt.
"The last time the Federal Reserve had raised interest rates as aggressively as it had recently was more than 40 years ago, and the result was that 24 countries went bankrupt.
#Debt payments were crowding out spending to confront social and environmental crises. Debt service was 50% higher than combined spending in African countries on #education, #health, social protection and #climate."
"Debt service was absorbing 54% of budget revenue and 40% of public spending in Africa, the report said. Spread across all continents, 35 countries were paying more than half of their revenue servicing their debts, and 54 over one-third."
Similarly, #climate finance can too easily devolve into a way to strong-arm developing countries, and to siphon off some more of their wealth. That's still colonialism.
Concessional loans , or soft loans, have more generous terms than market loans. These generally include below-market interest rates , grace periods in which the loan recipient is not required to make debt payments for several years or a combination of low interest rates/grace periods.
"Stiell called for the #WorldBank and governments to “step up the pace” on #ClimateFinance, including by addressing new sources of funds. These could include a frequent flyer levy and taxes on the carbon emissions from #shipping.
He called for reform at the development banks, [and] changes to the banks’ lending practices that would give poor countries greater access to finance."
"The US should stop funding the World Bank and IMF because they promote “policies that are harmful to the countries they’re trying to help,” especially on climate change, said Stephen Moore, a co-author of the #Project2025 chapter on finance & a longtime economic adviser to Trump. That includes funding renewable energy projects when it would be more beneficial to build power plants that run on fossil fuels, he said."
While it's the rich who are overwhelmingly responsible for global emissions, and the poor who disproportionately suffer from the consequences, this is how the right wing frames it:
“Climate change is something really, really rich people can afford to worry about, but not poor people,” Moore said in an interview. “They have to worry about how they’re going to get their meal next week.”
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