Why Climate Transition Risks are Macro-critical: The IMF and Enabling a Green Recovery

Sara Jane Ahmed (V20), Niranjali Amerasinghe (ActionAid USA), Irene Monasterolo (Vienna University of Economics and Business), Sargon Nissan (Recourse), Maju Varghese (Center for Financial Accountability), Johannes Wiegand (IMF)

“We cannot have macroeconomic and financial stability without environmental and social sustainability.” - Kristalina Georgieva, IMF Managing Director, 10 March 2021

Addressing the climate emergency is a generational task. Time is running out to meet the Paris Agreement’s goals. The pandemic-triggered economic crisis compels international financial institutions to transform their crisis support to support countries’ transition to sustainable energy, while ensuring equity and citizens’ rights. The IMF Managing Director’s commitment to climate has been unequivocal. The growing chorus of voices calling on all of us to build back better towards a green and inclusive recovery poses an additional challenge to the IMF’s traditional role and priorities, not least its most universal function – surveillance. This role affects all the IMF’s members – rich, large emitting nations to small island states already confronting the realities of climate change.

This panel, organised by Recourse, Bretton Woods Project, ActionAid USA, the Centre for Financial Accountability and the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance as part of the 2021 Civil Society Policy Forum of the Spring Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, will feature speakers from the IMF, inter-governmental organisations, private sector and CSOs in the Global North and South. It will explore how the IMF can enable countries’ sustainable transition, while identifying how its policy advice and surveillance is all too often an obstacle to a just and sustainable transformation. Speakers will consider the Fund’s evolution from treating climate risks as mere costs of damage from climate-related events, to how best to provide countries surveillance advice that supports transition to a low-carbon economy.

Panellists

Sara Jane Ahmed , Finance Advisor, The Vulnerable Twenty (V20) Group of Ministers of Finance of the Vulnerable Group Forum
Niranjali Amerasinghe , Executive Director, ActionAid USA
Irene Monasterolo , Assistant Professor of Climate Economics and Finance, Vienna University of Economics and Business
Sargon Nissan , IMF Manager, Recourse (Moderator)
Maju Varghese , Associate Director, Center for Financial Accountability
Johannes Wiegand , IMF Strategy, Policy and Review Department

The session will be livestreamed on the IMF’s Civil Society Policy Forum web site .

Organiser: Centre for Sustainable Finance

Contact email: uv1@soas.ac.uk