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special drawing rights
In Samoa, UN Chief Says Low-Lying Island Nations Face 'Annihilation' by Climate Chaos
"We need all countries to honor their promises on climate finance and a strong finance outcome from this year's COP where we will discuss the financial commitments after 2025."
Aug 22, 2024
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned in Samoa on Thursday that low-lying Pacific island nations face the threat of "annihilation" from rising sea levels, cyclones, ocean heatwaves, and other dangers driven by human-caused climate chaos.
"High and rising sea levels pose an enormous threat to Samoa, to the Pacific, and to other small island developing states. These challenges demand resolute international action," Guterres said. "Sea levels are rising even faster than the global average, posing an existential threat to millions of Pacific Islanders."
"If we are not able to stop what is happening with climate change, this problem that we see in Samoa will not stay in Samoa."
Recalling the 2009 earthquake and tsunami that killed at least 192 people and devastated Samoa, Guterres said that "we have seen people that moved their houses inland, we have seen people that persisted coming back and rebuilding, we have seen an enormous determination of people to fight against, not only the impact of the tsunami, but the impacts of the rising sea levels and of the storms and the cyclones."
"I've seen a wall that is protecting a village from the sea; that wall in 20 years, because of the tsunami—because of the rising sea level, and because of the heavy storms—has already been built three times," he continued.
"People are suffering. Economies are being shattered. And entire territories face annihilation," Guterres stressed.
Guterres said Samoans' ambitious plans to tackle the "existential threat for millions" are being impeded by a lack of promised funding from rich nations. He pointed to the Loss and Damage Fund, agreed to in 2022 at the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt, as well as rich countries' 2021 pledge to double climate adaptation funding to $200 billion.
"We are fighting hard for climate justice," said Guterres, but "we are not seeing the money that is needed and that's why we ask for the reform and the international financial institutions in order for the funding needs of countries, like Pacific countries, to be met."
"We need all countries to honor their promises on climate finance and a strong finance outcome from this year's COP where we will discuss the financial commitments after 2025," he added.
COP29—which has been criticized by green groups for being chaired by a former oil executive—is set to take place in Baku, Azerbaijan in November.
Low-lying Pacific island nations are among the least responsible for the climate emergency but are among the most adversely affected by the crisis. To help address this, Guterres reiterated his call for small island nations like Samoa to have access to $80 billion in development from special drawing rights (SDRs), which are reserve assets controlled by the International Monetary Fund that can be exchanged for cash. Rich countries can also place SDRs in a fund for developing nations' use.
The secretary-general also said that new income streams are key to the survival of nations like Samoa whose tourism industries were devastated by the Covid-19 pandemic and which "have not received the support of the international community."
"If we are not able to stop what is happening with climate change, this problem that we see in Samoa will not stay in Samoa," Guterres warned. "It will be happening more and more everywhere in all coastal areas, from New York to Shanghai, from Lagos to Bangkok."
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Landmark Report Details Just Path to Energy Transition and 1.5°C Target
Recommendations include tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, phasing out fossil fuels by 2050, and providing the Global South with the means to fund its energy transition.
Nov 22, 2023
As world leaders prepare to gather at the COP28 global climate talks next week in Dubai, 350.orgpublished a report Wednesday detailing how negotiators can draft a just and effective global transition to renewable energy.
One of the main agenda items at COP28 will be a worldwide target for renewable energy. Yet this target must be accompanied by a 2050 phaseout of fossil fuels and funds to speed the transition in the Global South, 350.org concluded.
"A renewable energy target at COP28 will only constitute a meaningful step towards climate justice if it is accompanied by a clear roadmap for implementation that includes equitable mechanisms and commitments in the financial and policy realms, as well as an urgent and equitable phaseout of fossil fuels," Andreas Sieber, 350.org associate director of global policy, said in a statement. "Without these, any agreement would represent a hollow, 'easy win' for the COP28 President Al Jaber, and risk allowing polluting countries to hide behind a renewables goal while continuing to emit fossil fuels."
"To achieve the proposed global renewable energy target by 2030, massive growth in financial investment into renewable energy is required in the Global South outside China, from both private and public sources."
The report, fully titled Power Up for Climate Justice: Financing and Implementing a 1.5°C-Aligned Global Renewables Target, also details how the target itself can be meaningful.
"For the global renewable energy target at COP28 to address global energy needs and redress fossil fuel dependency, it must include commitments to triple fair, safe, and clean renewable energy capacity by 2030 and deploy 1.5 terawatts per year thereafter, double energy efficiency by 2030, and completely phaseout of fossil fuels by 2050," said 350.org executive director May Boeve.
The report further argues that the target should be based on demonstrably effective technologies like wind and solar power.
"There is no room for dangerous distractions and unproven technologies such as Carbon Capture and Storage, nuclear energy, ammonia co-firing, which do not address the root causes of the climate crisis, and often cannot be implemented at scale," the report authors wrote.
They also emphasized the importance of providing poorer nations with the funds to scale up their renewable energy buildouts.
"To achieve the proposed global renewable energy target by 2030, massive growth in financial investment into renewable energy is required in the Global South outside China, from both private and public sources," Sieber said. "Barriers such as debt and the inequitable cost of capital in the Global South, significantly hinder investment in renewable energy."
Only $260 billion was invested in the Global South in 2022, the report notes, even though the International Energy Agency has said that $1.9 trillion is needed per year by 2030 in order to limit global heating to 1.5°C while providing energy to around 5 billion people—an amount of finance seven times 2022 levels.
The report offers several suggestions for how that funding can be realized, including canceling debt; sending the Global South $100 billion a year in concessional finance, providing it with $200 billion a year in grants; and channeling money away from fossil fuels by taxing profits, shifting subsidies and investments from fossil fuel projects to renewables, taxing wealth, issuing more Special Drawing Rights from the IMF, and using existing infrastructure funds.
The report comes at a crucial time for climate action. This year, 2023, is likely to be the hottest year in 125,000 years, and the U.N. concluded this week that current pledges put the world on course for 2.9°C of warming beyond preindustrial levels. But 350.org argues it's not too late to limit warming with ambitious action.
"The Paris Agreement is the landmark multilateral framework to stop climate change, and COP28—which includes the Global Stocktake of whether the world is on track to meet this target—is a pivotal moment to achieve its intended goal: limiting global heating to no more than 1.5°C," the report authors said.
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Stiglitz to IMF: Give Poor Nations $300 Billion a Year to Fight Climate Crisis
"As the scale of climate change impresses itself more and more on us, we are going to need bolder things," Stiglitz said at the IMF and World Bank's annual meeting in Morocco.
Oct 13, 2023
The International Monetary Fund, or IMF, should give poorer nations $300 billion a year to respond to the climate emergency, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said.
Stiglitz outlined his recommendation in an interview with The Guardian as he attended the fund's annual meeting with the World Bank in Marrakesh, Morocco, which runs from Monday, October 9 to Sunday, October 15.
"As the scale of climate change impresses itself more and more on us, we are going to need bolder things," Stiglitz said.
"When the time comes and we are frying and somebody says: 'How do we get out of the frying pan?,' this [annual SDR allocations] is one way of doing so."
In his call, Stiglitz joined the push for the IMF to release more Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a reserve asset that can be exchanged for cash. Wealthy nations also have the option of placing their SDRs in a fund for poorer countries.
"Basically, it is printing money," Stiglitz said. "It wouldn't be inflationary but it would be transformative."
Stiglitz' remarks came about a week after nearly 60 U.S. Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asking them to support a new allocation of SDRs. The IMF issued $650 billion in SDRs in 2021 to help with the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, and the legislators wanted it to issue the same amount to help nations address the climate crisis, war, and future pandemics.
Stiglitz's call is even bolder at $300 billion a year, because the lawmakers limited themselves to an amount that the IMF could approve without a vote from Congress. While Stiglitz acknowledged his plan was ambitious and unlikely to pass through the current U.S. Congress, it was worth pushing for given the urgency of the moment.
"When the time comes and we are frying and somebody says: 'How do we get out of the frying pan?,' this [annual SDR allocations] is one way of doing so," he told The Guardian.
Stiglitz said the money should be used to help poorer nations fund their equivalent to the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act—which invested $370 billion in renewable energy. But it's impossible for less wealthy countries to make that kind of investment on their own, Stiglitz said.
"Developing countries can't do it on any scale," he told The Guardian. "Unless developing countries and emerging markets reduce their emissions, no matter what pieties we do in the U.S. and Europe, we will get global warming. The rhetoric is about doing something about climate change and then rather than getting onboard [the people] you most need to get onboard, you alienate them."
In a report published Thursday, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) agreed that many poorer nations are not in the financial position to take ambitious climate action, and proposed more SDRs as one potential remedy. What's holding them back, CEPR said, was a large debt burden: Almost 80 low-to-middle-income countries face debt distress, and three-fourths of these are especially vulnerable to climate impacts. This creates a "vicious cycle" in which countries struggle to both service debt and respond to extreme weather events, leaving them unable to either get out of debt or recover from disasters and invest in the future.
"Most of the world is going through what many have termed a 'polycrisis,' facing down high levels of external debt, combined with interlocking crises of food insecurity, fluctuating energy prices, impacts of war, and of course, the climate crisis," report coauthor Ivana Vasic Lalovic said in a statement. "Countries are limited in what they can do to respond to the climate crisis, though, when they are forced to divert so much of their resources toward servicing their debts."
The report, titled The Growing Debt Burdens of Global South Countries: Standing in the Way of Climate and Development Goals, called on major financial institutions to address the situation by updating debt resolution frameworks, providing debt relief, financing through grants instead of loans, and allocating more SDRs.
"The international finance community needs to accept that the current dynamic, which prioritizes debt service–no matter how burdensome–over human needs and the urgency of climate crisis preparedness and response is unsustainable," coauthor Lara Merling said in a statement. "They need to step forward with solutions. Millions of lives may depend on it."
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