In furtherance of its commitment to addressing environmental challenges, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that it has received $40 billion so far for its new Resilience and Sustainability Trust.
This was made known recently by IMF Head, Kristalina Georgieva during a pre-recorded speech broadcast to the Ibrahim Governance Forum, an Africa-focused conference. Georgieva admitted that building resilience to the effects of climate change would cost trillions of dollars over the next decade.
Photo Credit: Grant Ellis
Climate investment globally needs to increase by up to six times from the roughly $640 billion spent in 2020, to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said in April.
“The devastasting effects of climate change are robbing Africa of lives and livelihoods,” Georgieva told the conference, which was scheduled to mark six months until the COP27 climate conference in Cairo.
The IMF launched the new financing facility for low and middle-income countries in April, with the goal of raising at least $45 billion. Its Finance Director had said it would need to receive “a substantial fraction” of the total before starting operations of the new trust, by the time IMF meets with World Bank in October.
Climate investment globally needs to increase by up to six times from the roughly $640 billion spent in 2020.
Georgieva said at the conference that many African countries were dealing with droughts that were increasing food and political insecurity.
“Now the surge in food, fuel and fertilizer prices have dramatically raised import costs, all in the context of already high sovereign debt and limited fiscal capacity,” Georgieva said.
“African countries cannot face these overlapping crises – climate, food, pandemic – alone,” she said, adding that IMF lending to African countries in the last year was 13 times the annual average.
Source: reuters.com
