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After Dubai: Towards a “just, orderly, and equitable” fossil fuel phase out

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 11:44:00 +0000

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Unless we win a comprehensive climate finance breakthrough to address the global North-South inequality crisis, all hope for ‘a fair, orderly, and equitable’ phase-out of fossil fuels will be abandoned, writes Tom Athanasiou for Foreign Policy in Focus.

During the recent climate summit in Dubai, COP28 president Sultan Al-Jaber, with some exasperation, came out with the following rather amazing statement:

“Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phase out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.”

Al-Jabar was posturing when he made this quip about caves, but he can almost be forgiven. We badly need a roadmap for a “phase out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development.” By noting the lack of one, he underscored its absence. This is true even if he spoke as a flack of the fossil fuel cartel.

Speaking of COP28, it helped settle the question of the COPs, which still troubles the climate left. The COPs are easily dismissed as “blah blah blah.” But they are, in a word, necessary. We would be in far greater trouble without them, and this is true even though the COPs are condemned to make decisions by consensus, even though they engender endless greenwashing, even though, with next year’s COP29 slated for Azerbaijan, two in a row will be hosted by straight-up petrostates.

The climate negotiations are finally circling core issues. COP26 saw a decision to “phase down” coal, and COP28 opened with the Loss and Damage fund finally lurching into existence. Then came COP28’s key decision text, which called for “Transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.” Only a month later—with President Biden’s decision to “pause” the approval of new liquified natural gas terminals, a decision the White House explicitly linked to COP28— the meeting demonstrated real world benefits. It could have many more in the future, including outside the United States.

Meanwhile, COP29 is set to see climate finance take center stage, and the next big battle begin. It could (if all goes well) culminate in 2025, where COP30 will be hosted by Lula da Sila’s Brazil, and deliver a meaningful decision on that crucial front. This is not the time to performatively insist that COP stands for “conference of polluters.”

Having said all this, I must immediately add that the climate negotiations have thus far failed, as decisively witnessed by the steadily rising atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration. COP skeptics are quite right about this. But in their failure the international negotiations are hardly alone. Domestic climate action has had many victories, but it has hardly put us on a path to deep and rapid decarbonization. Nor has the green technology revolution brought planetary emissions into a peak-and-decline pathway. Nor—and this is not easy to say—have the world’s direct action and climate justice movements filled the gaps. Politically, they may be everything, but they too have failed to stop the warming.

One key point: the COP28 text does not simply call for transitioning away from fossil fuels but rather stipulates that this transition must be “just, orderly, and equitable,” a much more challenging prospect. This led Sivan Kartha, a climate equity specialist at the Stockholm Environment Institute, to add that the “deepest fissure” in Dubai was between those who simply want a rapid fossil phase out and those who insist that, to have any hope of success, such a phase out must be fair.

Many of us agree—but what does such fairness imply?

Embracing “Climate Emergency”

It has become fashionable, yet again, to argue that terms like “climate emergency” are dangerously demoralizing. Perhaps they are. Unfortunately, they are also accurate. We really do have to aim for net-zero emission by 2050, and that means facing political-economic challenges that are difficult to exaggerate. As are those posed by the closely related 1.5°C temperature goal.

There are lots of voices telling us that 1.5°C is no longer achievable, but this is not quite true. Rather, 1.5°C remains achievable, but only via “overshoot and decline” pathways in which, sometime after the warming grinds past 1.5°C, we manage to claw it back down. Will we achieve such a mobilization, or at least avoid catastrophe? This is the real question.

We are going to go into 1.5°C overshoot soon. As we do, even if we assume we’ll be able to draw the temperature back down, we can’t know how extreme the overshoot will be, or how long it will last. Some people, Marxist climate hawk Andreas Malm among them, do not think we’ll be able to pull off the necessary drawdown (“I’m not an optimist about the human project”), though he agrees that it is technically possible.

If we seriously intend to keep 1.5°C alive (as a long-term goal—think 2100), we must in the short term do everything to keep the temperature peak “well below 2°C” (the weak end of the Paris target), which is widely judged, by top scientists, to still be achievable. But there’s a hitch. Even this weaker goal demands, per the IPCC, “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” It’s not going to happen in today’s world.

If, in 2050, we are approaching true net-zero planetary emissions, we’ll have a good chance of avoiding a world in which the cascading consequences of the warming become unmanageable. Very rapidly building low- and ultra-low emissions energy systems around the world is a necessary step towards that goal—and because such systems are emerging, and rapidly dropping in cost, it’s possible to be honestly optimistic. But such systems are not going to be enough.

Net-zero 2050 means going beyond the deployment of new, ultra-low emissions infrastructure to also eliminate existing fossil fuel infrastructure. This means that virtually all countries, be they rich or poor, developed or developing, should immediately stop investing in fossil fuel infrastructure, not least because that infrastructure will have to be decommissioned—shut down, mothballed, stranded—long before it’s worn out. All countries must also very rapidly decommission the fossil fuel infrastructure (e.g. existing oil wells, old coal plants) they already have in place—even if it’s profitable and even if people depend on it for their livelihoods. Such a decommissioning process is going to be both expensive and disruptive, in both political and economic terms, and in ways that are particularly hard on poor and insecure populations.

In a world geared for rapid transition, these would be tractable challenges, but that would be a world in which we were speaking honestly about the depth and profundity of the necessary transformation, a world in which we were, as per Australian author and analyst David Spratt, in “emergency mode.” This, obviously, is not our world, which still tends towards greenwashing, soft-pedaling, and small-bore gradualism, if not actual denialism and climate “brightsiding.”

The encouraging possibilities are real, don’t get me wrong.

The green technology revolution really does make it possible for us to save ourselves, and to build new futures. But we’re still facing almost impossible strategic challenges, and justice is at the heart of many of them. Brave choices are going to be necessary, and a political movement that tries to avoid them will not do well when push comes to shove. As it will, within the lifetimes of our children.

A Global Extraction Phase Out

It will be very difficult to engineer a sufficiently rapid phase out of fossil fuel consumption. But the difficulties are even greater when it comes to fossil fuel extraction and production. Think mining, and drilling, and fracking.

There are rich countries like the United States and Norway, which are heavily invested in oil and gas extraction. High-poverty developing countries, like South Africa and India, are heavily invested in coal, while the Democratic Republic of Congo is highly dependent on oil revenue to provide public services. Gulf oil exporters like the United Arab Emirates, the COP28 host, was a developing country before it struck oil. Today, though the UAE may not be “developed” in the same way as, say, the United States or Germany, it is nonetheless a wealthy, high-capacity country with the money and resources to buffer the turbulence that will come with any rapid abandonment of oil.

Which countries deserve more time before they have to stop extracting and selling fossil fuels? The question haunts the climate negotiations, but it is not, in an important sense, the right question at all. The greater truth is that we must stop the fossil energy pipeline, globally and as soon as possible. The right question is which countries need support—financial, political, and technological support—before they can hope to rapidly break their dependency on fossil fuel extraction.

All extracting countries will plead their cases. The most legitimate pleas come from poor developing countries that are highly dependent on fossil-related revenues and livelihoods. But although lots of countries call themselves developing, some of them are a lot richer than others. The good news is that this confusion is dissipating, for reasons that were easy to appreciate in Dubai, the global city of the United Arab Emirate. The UAE, like Saudi Arabia, is an extremely wealthy Gulf oil exporter that, while still officially a member of the “Group of 77” developing countries, is not a developing country at all.

Why must we say this? Because we must transition away from fossil fuels in a “just, orderly, and equitable” manner, and because such a transition is going to be extremely difficult. It is also going to be expensive, which immediately raises the “who pays?” question. Those who wish to evade this question—there are many, and they tend to be rich—seek delay by any available means, and in the next 10 years aggressively rosy predictions about carbon-dioxide removal—which would, if real, make a perfect case for delay—seem certain to play a leading role in their strategies.

In such a situation, with uncertainty layered upon complexity upon emergency, optimism is as much a danger as pessimism. For one thing, it is not at all obvious that we will manage to rapidly draw temperatures back down after they overshoot 1.5°C—Malm’s pessimism may, in the end, be well placed. For another, all efforts to honestly face the severity of our situation will be endlessly harried by soft-pedaling, false solutions, dangerous distractions, and lies. Politicians everywhere will want all the wiggle room they can get, and meanwhile the fossil cartel will move at every opportunity to deflect all efforts to mandate, or even discuss, the strategic demands of an actual planetary fossil-fuel phase out.

Al-Jaber was right: we need that roadmap.

On the Ground, with War in the Air

The climate negotiations are marked by endless skirmishing between global North and global South, which will not abate anytime soon. After all, the planet is still strongly structured by the “uneven and combined development” of the colonial past, and the countries of the global North still host the majority of the world’s wealth.

Despite this skirmishing, which has for decades kept fossil fuels off the negotiating agenda, COP28 saw the fossil phaseout challenge finally take center stage. Activists and diplomats alike saw this challenge as a litmus test that would show if the climate negotiations were fit for purpose. Will the negotiations take up the challenge, or can they be forever derailed and distracted, while the fossil cartel just continues its relentless, exterminist expansion? Perhaps we’ll know in a few years, but just now, after Dubai, a bit of guarded optimism may be in order.

To be sure, not everyone in Dubai connected the brutal logic of the climate reckoning to the larger geopolitical crisis, but this crisis hung palpably in the air. COP28 took place in the Arab world, and Gaza did not seem so very far away. The atrocity of the Israeli bombing continued day by excruciating day, and it could not be entirely separated from the discussions in the conference halls. The pain was acute within civil society circles. Demonstrations took place and were noticed, though they were marginalized by the COP’s security regime. Importantly, the ethos of the protest was an expansive one. The bombing, in particular, was not an isolated consequence of local hatreds. There were larger forces at work. The United States—which refused all talk of climate liability—was more than implicated. The term “settler colonialism” was heard again and again. The war, and war in general, was not a distant abstraction.

COPs are not mere climate meetings. The talk is not confined to carbon budgets and energy-system transformation. International debt relief, for example, is now front and center, as is the need for a radically new planetary finance architecture. The military budget—now over $2 trillion a year—is a common point of comparison, and a reminder that we routinely subsidize violence on a vast scale. The problem of climate is the problem of history, and history is suddenly a very big problem. As the Financial Times noted,

The anecdotal evidence that war is surging round the world is confirmed by the numbers. A recent report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies documented 183 ongoing conflicts around the world, the highest number in more than three decades. And that figure was arrived at before the outbreak of the war in Gaza.

The fraying of the world order is, obviously, a threat to climate cooperation. Beyond this, and beyond the fading illusion that the climate challenge will yield to simple interventions, we’re still only beginning to come to terms with its implacable sprawl. There is little chance of climate stabilization without a political-economic shift that makes robust cooperation possible, but such a shift isn’t going to come cheaply and easily, and simple stories will not help trigger it. How could they when the riddle of climate stabilization is as well the riddle of development, and the riddle of peace?

The Gaza bombing is now on the agenda of the International Court of Justice, where it has joined a crowded docket that includes climate change lawsuits and all manner of other infamies. Nor can these all be laid entirely at the feet of the global North. The two million people of Gaza are currently, and justly, in the spotlight, but spare a thought for another two million people, the Rohingya of Myanmar, who have been murdered and expelled by a huge and terrifying wave of anti-Muslim violence. Southern elites are not innocent.

And don’t forget Russia’s war in Ukraine, which, in addition to its immediate murderous consequences, is a milestone in the global right’s campaign against collective action, including climate action. It has certainly been an enormous setback to the Russian activist campaign for carbon neutrality.

Spinning the Outcome

During COP28’s second week, the negotiations were roiled by the leak of a letter that Haitham al-Ghais, the OPEC secretary general, had sent to the 13 members of OPEC. The letter warned that “pressure against fossil fuels may reach a tipping point with irreversible consequences”, and argued that OPEC members must “proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy i.e. fossil fuels rather than emissions.”

This was not an isolated move. There was also, by accounts, a great deal of arm twisting, and even a Saudi walkout. Jennifer Morgan, a long-time civil society climate strategist who is now Special Envoy at the German Foreign Ministry, went so far as to speculate that OPEC might be in “a bit of panic.” If so, the panic quickly passed. Once COP28 was over, the Saudis argued that the Dubai agreement to transition away from fossil fuels was entirely optional, just one of several “choices” on an “a la carte menu.”

First of all, the OPEC cartel, and the fossil cartel more generally, wants to prevent the transition away or phase down/out frames (the two are essentially equivalent) from taking hold, and argues instead that “emissions” (which can, it is said, be “captured”) are the real problem. This is the greenwashing strategy, and its partisans will use all available arguments in its service, including repeated references to energy justice. Al-Ghais, for example, explains that “Our goal must be to reduce emissions, which is the core objective of the Paris Agreement, while ensuring energy security and universal access to affordable energy.”

OPEC, moreover, has no intention of scaling back fossil fuel extraction. This could change (one must hope) but there is absolutely no chance that it will do so unless the great powers of the global North have already taken the lead and begun their own fossil fuel extraction phase out. Which is why the Biden administration’s decision to scrutinize and hopefully reject a wave of new LNG export terminals, if it survives the counterattacks, could mark a true turning point. Talk, after all, is cheap, and just because a country’s delegation supported phase down/out at COP28 (as did the U.S. delegation) this doesn’t mean its decision makers are ready, and able, to follow through. At the COP, many of them clearly weren’t, as is crisply shown in this December 2023 graphic from Carbon Brief:

Some countries, or rather the fossil powers within those countries, are planning even greater production increases than the United States is. Some of these (India and Nigeria) are clearly developing countries, while some (Canada, Russia, and Saudi Arabia) are not. Most all fossil-rich countries, whether their history lay with the global North or the global South, are still planning on exploiting their coal, oil, and gas resources for as long as they possibly can, though do note that China is at the encouraging bottom of the chart. All told, despite its complexities, the picture is grim.

At the same time, the climate reckoning is arriving, and it finds us everywhere divided between rich and poor. In consequence, the countries of the global South can continue to make compelling appeals to basic levels of developmental justice, and these appeals cannot be easily dismissed, even when they bleed into PR cover for continued fossil investment. The energy poverty of the global South is deadly real, as is its pressing need—and its right—to a viable development path, as are the obstacles that today’s world system strews in its path.

(Note that this chart is somewhat out of date – Azerbaijan, which holds the COP29 presidency, has since COP28 announced that it is planning on raising its gas production by a third.)

Moving Forward

To succeed, the fossil fuel phaseout roadmap must be reasonably detailed and properly funded. At the same time, it must sharply increase the development and build-out of low-carbon energy systems. In practice, this roadmap has to include nationally differentiated coal, oil, and gas extraction phaseout timeframes detailed enough to be useful to both government planners and political organizers, and financing strategies that can support them.

Given the emergency, these phaseout timeframes will be extremely challenging, as befits the goal of net-zero emissions by or around 2050. We have to be realistic about this, but it’s not a traditional realism that we’re after. Traditional realism tells us that the necessary timeframes are unachievable, in large part because countries always hew to their “national interests,” which can be only slowly changed. Climate realism, on the other hand, tells us that it’s the pace of the necessary decarbonization, not the politics of the day, that is immutable, that the problem of climate stabilization must be seen as a solution to a collective action problem, in which national interests rapidly change.

Collective action problems—commons problems—have a special relationship to justice. So, while I have no idea what the “orderly” part of “just, orderly, and equitable” is going to wind up meaning, I’m confident that justice and equity are going to be key to any successful climate transition.

But what kind of justice? And what shape must it take? These questions bring us back to Al-Jaber’s roadmap, the one for a “phase out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development.” It’s a bear of a problem, but lots of people are working on it. For starters, look at the work of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty initiative. Or Phaseout Pathways for Fossil Fuel Production within Paris-Compliant Carbon Budgets, the Tyndell Centre report that Dan Calverley and Kevin Anderson published in 2022. Or Economic Diversification from Oil Dependency, a report Vincent Yu, a key G77 negotiator, wrote for the Third World Network. Or the many reports of the Civil Society Equity Review, an international collaborative that, full disclosure, I work closely with. The conversation is still in its early days, but there are lots of good ideas floating around.

Meanwhile, if we’re going to use terms like “economic diversification” and “developing countries,” let’s use them carefully. The challenges here involve “differentiation” between different kinds of countries and different kinds of circumstances, and they are anything but easy. The obvious example is the Gulf oil exporters like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. They may in some sense be developing countries, but they have the money to diversify their economies as they phase out fossil fuel extraction, in ways that other developing countries like Kenya or even India absolutely do not. Harder cases come when you consider countries like China, hybrids that are both developed and developing, or when you take inequality within countries into proper account. For example, Saudi Arabia is traditionally considered to be a developing country, while the United States is the richest country in the world, but both are brutally divided between rich and poor. Somehow, this has to matter.

At the end of the day, the biggest differentiation problem remains the one between the global North and the global South. The challenges here are now widely if not routinely recognized. In Dubai, soon after the COP28 decision was gaveled through, Avinash Persaud, now Barbados’ special climate envoy, noted that “Some activists were disappointed we didn’t commit to an immediate fossil fuel phase out. Still, without the trade, investment, and finance to achieve it, it would either have hit developing countries hardest or been meaningless.”

These points will have to be addressed as the finance challenge—the need for a global financial architecture that can support rapid climate transition—takes center stage. Which brings me to a new report – An Equitable Phase Out of Fossil Fuel Extraction: Towards a reference framework for a fast and fair rapid global phase out of coal, oil and gas—the preliminary version of which was released at COP28 by the Extraction Equity Working Group of the Civil Society Equity Review.

I can’t summarize this report here—though it does sport a fine executive summary—but I do want to explain why its subtitle includes the words “towards a reference framework.” The explanation, basically, is that a detailed climate transition roadmap is not yet possible. An Equitable Phase Out of Fossil Fuel Extraction thus proposes a framework by which to judge the steps that can be taken in the next few years, to at least indicate if they are fair and ambitious enough to have a real chance. To this end, it concentrates on calculating coal, oil, and gas phaseout dates for all major fossil fuel producing countries—here’s a scatterplot with the oil dates; scroll right or left for coal and gas—and on estimating the minimum level of annual international public finance that will be needed to support these phase outs.

This minimum is denominated in “hundreds of billions of dollars” a year.

An Equitable Phase Out of Fossil Fuel Extraction argues that, if we would limit warming to 1.5°C, all countries must immediately cease to build new fossil fuel extraction infrastructure. Further, wealthy fossil fuel producers whose overall economies are less dependent on fossil extraction—such as the United States, UK, Australia, Norway, Germany, and Canada—must phase out all fossil fuel extraction by 2031, while also providing significant financial support to poorer countries that are economically dependent on fossil fuel revenues and employment. Such poorer countries are given until 2050, though they too must be wrapping things up much earlier.

One key point, in all this, should never be forgotten. The “unrealistic” nature of these dates is not the result of any equity-side logic—in which we try to model a fair phase out—but rather derives from the implacable constraints imposed by the Earth’s nearly-depleted 1.5°C emissions budget. To push these deadlines out, say to 2060 or 2070, we must either weaken our temperature goal or we must assume—as the geoengineers will incessantly encourage us to do—that gigatons upon gigatons of carbon-dioxide can very soon, and affordably, and safely, be extracted from the climate system and “sequestered” away.

Back to the Ground

After Dubai, much of the left’s commentary focused on criticizing the late-game negotiations in which “phase out” was replaced by “transitioning away,” as if such diplomatic wordsmithing was only a watering down, as if it revealed the compromised truth at the core of a meaningless negotiation. For the activists embedded in the negotiations, the sense was different. They generally agreed that Dubai had “sent the necessary signal”—despite everything, the world’s governments have decided the fossil economy has to go.

Bill McKibben had the last word on this disagreement when he argued that the “transitioning away” phrase “will hang over every discussion from now on—especially the discussions about any further expansion of fossil fuel energy.” In a nutshell, he argued that the diplomats forged a tool and it’s up to us all to wield it.

The Dubai decision is of course limited. But its real weakness has more to do with loopholes and omissions than with any fine point of diplomatic wording. And the greatest of its omissions is financial: there is no agreement on how the phaseout will be funded. Harjeet Singh, now the Global Engagement Director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, put the overall picture succinctly and well,

A long-overdue direction to move away from coal, oil, and gas has been set. Yet, the resolution is marred by loopholes that offer the fossil fuel industry numerous escape routes, relying on unproven, unsafe technologies. The hypocrisy of wealthy nations, particularly the USA, as they continue to expand fossil fuel operations massively while merely paying lip service to the green transition, stands exposed. Developing countries, still dependent on fossil fuels for energy, income, and jobs, are left without robust guarantees for adequate financial support in their urgent and equitable transition to renewables. COP28 recognised the immense financial shortfall in tackling climate impacts, but the final outcomes fall disappointingly short of compelling wealthy nations to fulfil their financial responsibilities—obligations amounting to hundreds of billions, which remain unfulfilled.

Harjeet is being diplomatic when he refers to “hundreds of billions,” a figure that echoes the one used in the Equitable Phase Out of Fossil Fuel Extraction report. It seems to be the formulation of choice these days, at least when civil society researchers and activists want to assert financial markers large enough to move the window, but small enough to be taken as realistic.

It’s important to understand that figures of this scale refer to public monies—grants and grant equivalents—and that they’ve lately been sharing the stage with references to trillions, which are typically private monies framed as “investments.” As in Dubai’s high-level Leader’s Declaration, which spoke of the opportunities that lay in “investing $5-7tn annually in greening the global economy by 2030.”

The elites are far more likely to deliver on private finance pledges than on public ones. Investment is something they know how to do. But a future defined by “investment” and “insurance” and “loans” and “aid” is unlikely be a future that takes proper account of even deep decarbonization, let alone the challenges of development in a climate-constrained world, let alone people-centered adaptation and an ethically defensible loss and damage response and recovery system. Which is to say that, unless we win a comprehensive climate finance breakthrough, all hope for a “fair, orderly, and equitable” transition will be abandoned in favor of a short-term neoliberal expediency that is unlikely to deliver the global just transition we actually need.

The challenge here encompasses everything from the historical responsibility of the global North to the debt crisis now wracking the global South to the inequality crisis raging in both North and South. Not to mention the crisis of democracy and the endless techno-economic complexities of the great rebuilding that’s now on the horizon. Bracket all this for now, but know that the next international battle will be fought over finance.

It’s about time.

Original source: Foreign Policy In Focus

Image credit: Some rights reserved by Friends of the Earth International, flickr creative commons

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Environment, Finance and debt

多額の借金が最貧困層をさらに貧しくする

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 15:30:00 +0000

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2008年以来の経済の縮小傾向と国際協力を蝕む「地政学的」紛争により、特にアフリカを中心とした最貧国で世界情勢が悪化し、貧困層の生活はさらに悪化している、とジョモ・クワメ・スンダラム氏は IPS newsに書いています。

あまりに芳しくない状況と見通のため、2人の有名なグローバリゼーションの擁護者が富裕国に緊急の行動を呼び掛けました。元IMF副専務理事兼世界銀行上級副総裁、アン・クルーガー教授、そして影響力のあるフィナンシャル・タイムズ紙コラムニストの マーテイン・ウルフ氏は、行動の欠如がもたらす悲惨な結果について不吉な警告を発しています。

深刻化する経済低迷

2008年の世界金融危機後の鈍い成長に続き、新型コロナウイルス感染症により世界中のサプライチェーンが混乱しました。それに続いて、パンデミック後の回復は、ウクライナ、そしてガザでの戦争によって乱されました。

食料とエネルギーの価格は一時的に急騰しましたが、これは主に日和見的な投資家による市場操作によるものです。物価上昇を口実に米連邦準備銀行と欧州中央銀行が利上げを行い、世界的に経済の低迷が深刻化しました。

非伝統的金融政策初期の10年間、特に容易なクレジットを提供する「量的緩和」の期間中に多額の借入を行った国々は、現在、特にグローバル・サウスにおいて、ますます耐え難い債務負担に対処しなければなりません。 

貧困（現在は「極度の貧困」と呼ばれている）と食料不安の削減は以前はささやかな進展がありましたが、悪化していないにしても、急激に鈍化しました。世界で最も貧しい人々の多くにとって、進歩は止まっているだけではなく、逆転さえしています。 

世界銀行は現在、貧困層を2017年の価格で1人当たりの1日の収入が2.15ドル未満の人々と定義していますいますが、貧困とみなされる人々は1998年の18億7000万人（世界人口の31％）から2023年には6億9000万人（9％）に減少したとそれは推定しました。 

貧困の減少速度は急激に鈍化しており、世界の貧困は若干減少すると予測されている2013年から2023年にかけて3パーセントポイントを少し超えましたが、2013年以前の10年間の14パーセントポイントよりもはるかに低いです。

最も貧しい人々は主に貧困国に集中している

世界の最貧国では、貧困減少のペースが最も鈍化しています。ウルフ氏はこれらの国を、世界銀行グループのソフト融資部門である国際開発協会（IDA）からの優遇融資を受ける資格があるとみなされる国と定義しています。

現在、アフリカの39か国を含む75か国がIDA融資の対象となると考えられています。バングラデシュ、ナイジェリア、パキスタンなど一部の国は、金融市場や世界銀行グループの国際復興開発銀行から、より高額な条件で借入することもできます。 

IDA融資の適格国では、極度の貧困層の割合が1998年の48％から2023年には26％に減少しました。しかし、これは2013年から2023年にかけて1％ポイントの減少にとどまったのに対し、その前の10年間では14％ポイント減少しました。 

極度の貧困は主にもっと経済状態の良い中所得国で減少しており、IDA融資の適格国では4億9,700万人が貧困となっています。世界の貧困層合計6億9,100万人のうち72％がIDA融資の対象国に住んでおり、残りの1億9,300万人は他の国にいます。

IDA融資の資格がない国の極度の貧困に占める人口の割合は1998年の5分の1から2023年には3%に低下し、2013年から2023年の間にわずか4パーセントポイントしか低下しませんでした。ウルフ氏は、全体的な成長は緩やかであると予想し、この3%の割合は2030年までにほぼ解消されると予想しています。 

したがって、極度の貧困は、貧困が最も集中し、深く根付いている世界の最貧国に注目と資源を集中させなければ、極度の貧困をなくすことができないと彼は主張します。

不平等な債務負担

政府債務は広範囲に広がっていますが、特に貧困層が最も集中している国では債務が悪化しています。世界銀行の最新の国際債務報告書は、こうした国々が信頼性が低く高価な資金に依存しすぎていると指摘しています。

報告書は、「最貧国にとって債務はほぼ身動きできないほどの重荷となっています。[IDA]から借入資格のある28カ国が現在、債務危機に陥る高いリスクにさらされている。11カ国が苦しんでいる」と認めています。

2012年から2021年にかけて、IDA融資の適格国の民間債権者に対する対外債務の割合は11.2%から28.0%に急増しました。支払われる利息が64億ドルから236億ドルに急増したため、債務返済額は2012年の260億ドルから2022年には890億ドルへと3倍以上に増加しました。 

一方、政府債務総額に占める社債保有者やその他の民間債権者の割合は、2021年の37%から2022年には14%に低下しました。米連邦準備銀行が2022年から2023年にかけて金利を大幅に引き上げたため、投資家は「高リスク」の貧しい借り手国を手放し、最も困窮している国々への融資は大幅に減りました。

この「完璧な嵐」により、借金苦が起こるのは驚くべきことではありません。2023年の国際債務報告書では、IDA適格国の56％（半数以上）がこうした危機に瀕するリスクにさらされていることが判明しました。

貧困国の債務困難

ウルフ氏は、貧困国にはるかに多くの譲許的資金を提供することが富裕国にとっての利益となり、義務であると主張します。しかし、そのような資金はここ数十年、特に30年以上前に第一次冷戦が終結したことで実際には減少しています。

IDAは、2022年7月から2025年6月までの第20次増資を利用して、譲許的な条件で融資を提供しています。世界銀行総裁は、表向きには、最貧国の成長加速、貧困削減、その他の課題への対処を目的として、より大規模な新たな増資を主張しています。 

IDA適格国には、世界で最も債務管理の状態の悪い国々が多く含まれており、その多くは非常に脆弱で、ショックに弱く、「逃れるのが難しい」貧困に陥っています。しかし、その問題は、最も困っている国々への譲許的融資を差し控えたり、撤回したりする口実となっています。 

貧困国が持続的に発展するには、さらに多くの譲許的資金やその他の資源が必要です。しかし、気候変動対策が行われている今日、持続可能な開発を単なる貧困の撲滅に縮小することは、最も貧しい開発途上国を後退させることになります。

世界金融協定は、貧困国の公正で持続可能な発展を損なう上で決定的役割を果たしてきました。これらの国々が現在、そして差し迫った苦境を克服できるようにすることが重要である一方で、さらに根本的な改革を早急に行わなければなりません。 

最も貧しい発展途上国は力がなく脆弱であるため、必要な改革は目前にありません。「国際社会」は、短期および中期的な大胆な改革に着手することを先へ先へと遅らせ続けています。

元経済学教授のジョモ・クワメ・スンダラム氏は、経済開発担当国連事務次長補を務め、経済思想のフロンティアを前進させたことに対してワシリー・レオンチェフ賞を受賞した。

Original source: Inter Press Service

Image credit: Some rights reserved by Friends of the Earth International, flickr creative commons

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Poverty and hunger, Inequality, Finance and debt

IMFと世界銀行は本当に変革できるのか？

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 14:29:00 +0000

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地政学的な偏り、時代遅れのガバナンス、過度に市場指向の枠組みは、これらの機関の構造的欠陥の一部にすぎないとジャヤティ・ゴーシュ氏はIPS Journalに書いています。

ブレトンウッズ機関がニューハンプシャー州での戦後の連合国通貨金融秩序会議で合意されて以来、80年間の存続を迎えるにあたり、ある程度の見直しは避けられません。ただし、これはかなり憂鬱な作業です。

国際金融機関である国際通貨基金（IMF）と、のちに世界銀行として知られるようになった組織は、第二次世界大戦が終わりに近づくと同時に、国際経済協力の可能性についての楽観的な空気の中で設立されました。しかし、それらの機能は、このシステムの設計者が当時期待していたものには遠く及びませんでした。

最初の10年間、両機関は再建のための融資に重点を置きました。その後、低所得国が実際に資金を受け取り始めたとき、融資に関連する条件（緊縮財政や公共財やサービスの民営化として表現される「財政規律」に重点を置いたもの）が非常に物議を醸し、望ましい結果をもたらさないことが非常に多くありました。1980年代と90年代の発展途上国の債務危機を通じて、IMFは実質的に債務回収者となり、グローバル・ノースに拠点を置く債権者の銀行に利益をもたらす（あるいは救済する）ことを目的としたプログラムを実施しました。

このパターンはあまりにもよく知られていたため、今世紀初頭までにほとんどの低所得国はIMFへの働きかけを避けるために過剰な外貨準備を保有し、自国保険をかけることを選択しました。この機関は衰退し、クライアント国もほとんどなく、ますます関連性がなくなりました。

皮肉なことに、G20諸国が救済資金のパイプラインとしてIMFを利用することを決定した世界金融危機によって、それは救われました。その後、ユーロ圏危機は、IMF にとって非常に大規模な（そして物議を醸す）融資を提供する新たな機会となりました。そしてそれ以来、IMF は再び業務平常通りを再開しています。

残念なことに、融資先の選択と提供されるさまざまな融資額に関する根本的な政治的背景がさらに明らかになってきています。2018年、ドナルド・トランプ大統領との親密さ、そしてあからさまな新自由主義政策への積極的な意欲のため、当時のアルゼンチン大統領マウリシオ・マクリ氏に対し、（最終的には）570億ドルという記録的な融資が提案されました。この融資は民間資本の大規模な流出を伴うほど不適切に設計されていたため、数年後にはアルゼンチンは再び債務危機に陥り、マクリ氏の後継者が混乱を収拾しなければならなくなりました。

目的に適っているか？

世界経済の金融安定化装置とされるIMFの復活に問題がある理由は、その活動の深い地政学的な性質とプログラムの問題だけではありません。劇的に変化した世界経済においてIMFと世界銀行が目的に適しているかどうかについては、真の疑問があります。

この80年間に、国家経済の相対的な規模と重要性には変化があり、その一方で民間資金の流れは顕著に増加しました。これらの機関は現在、その組織化と機能に重大な欠陥があることを明らかにしています。

それによって、世界中で経済的および生態学的不平等が急激に拡大し、社会的、政治的緊張と地政学的な紛争がさらに激化しています。人類は、世界規模の大規模な公共投資を必要とする共通の課題に直面しています。しかし、IMFと世界銀行の対応は遅すぎ、厄介で、（認めましょう）ケチで、これらの問題を和らげるどころか悪化させています。

その原因の一部は、両機関の時代遅れのガバナンスにあります。割り当てと投票権は、世界の少数の人々を抱える少数の経済大国に大きく偏っています。これらの国々の世界生産と世界貿易におけるシェアの低下を考えると、これを正当化することは現在さらに困難になっており、これは明らかにその国々の信頼性と正当性に影響を及ぼします。世界銀行のトップにアメリカ人、IMFのトップにヨーロッパ人など、これらの機関のリーダーシップに関する「紳士の慣例」は、もはやまったく正当化できません。

指導者を選ぶためには、よりオープンで透明性のある民主的なプロセスを導入する必要があります。IMFの理事会は、世界の多数派である国々、特にアフリカからの代表をさらに確保するために拡大されるべきです。重要な決定については、二重多数決の投票メカニズムにより、決定が大多数派だけでなく主要株主の支持も得られることが保証されること、また、世界経済の輪郭の変化を反映して、割り当てと株式の全体的な増加も必要です。

その機能の変化はさらに重要になる可能性があります。あまりにも長い間、両機関は狭く、過度に市場志向の経済枠組みの中で運営されてきました。これは、債務国や外国為替問題に苦しむ国々の問題を解決することに繰り返し失敗しており、基礎的な経済モデルを形作る非常に限定的で非現実的な想定から外れる大きな問題に対処することもできません。

その結果、多くの国で開発の欠如、極度の不安定性、定期的な危機に伴う状況が強いられ、繰り返し支援が必要となっています。経済モデルは、需要側の要因、公共投資の乗数効果、社会的および経済的権利に対する特定の政策の影響（雇用、経済的不平等、基本的な商品やサービスへのアクセス、社会的保護と環境条件）と気候変動を考慮して変更する必要があります。

現在の制度の制限された枠組みの中でも、多くのことができるはずです。最も明らかなものの1つは、IMFによって創出された流動性である新しい特別引出権（SDR）の発行と、その後の世界の国内総生産の増加に合わせた毎年の新規発行です。

効果的な多国間主義に関する国連ハイレベル諮問委員会（私もそのメンバーでした）は、IMFに対して、SDRを必要とせず、使用することのない富裕国に不均衡にSDRを提供する割り当てに基づく新たな配分ではなく、「選択的SDR配分」システムを導入することを勧告しました。それによって弱い対外的立場にある国のみが追加のSDRを受け取ることになり、気候、交易条件や金利のショック、世界的な混乱から生じる資本の流れなどの特定の条件によって自動的にもたらされます。

同様に、ソブリン債務に関して、IMFは公的および民間のすべての債権者の債務整理への参加を保証する多国間法的枠組みを積極的に創設すべきです。救済策は、経済活動の復活と人権の漸進的な実現を促進するものでなければなりません。

これらの改革は明らかなものですが、これらの制度における権力を維持しようとする少数の富裕国の抵抗を考慮すると、その可能性は大変低いように思われます。世界経済における非常に多くの急速かつしばしば予期せぬ変化を考慮すると、このような足の引っ張り合いは、各機関を再び関係のないものとして運命づける可能性があります。多国間行動が緊急に必要とされている中で、それは機会を逃すだけでなく、悲劇となるでしょう。

Original source: IPS Journal / Social Europe

Image credit: Some rights reserved by ICGFM, flickr creative commons

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Global governance, Finance and debt

Onerous debt making poorest poorer

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 12:52:00 +0000

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Contractionary economic trends since 2008 and ‘geopolitical’ conflicts subverting international cooperation have worsened world conditions, especially in the poorest countries, mainly in Africa, leaving their poor worse off, writes Jomo Kwame Sundaram for IPS news.

Conditions and prospects are so bad that two well-known globalisation cheerleaders have appealed to rich nations for urgent action. Former IMF Deputy Managing Director and World Bank Senior Vice-President, Professor Anne Krueger and influential Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf warn ominously of the dire consequences of inaction.

Deepening stagnation

Following tepid growth after the 2008 global financial crisis, Covid-19 disrupted supply chains worldwide. Then, post-pandemic recovery was disrupted by wars in Ukraine and then Gaza.

Food and energy prices soared briefly, largely due to market manipulation by opportunistic investors. Invoking the price hikes as a pretext, the US Fed and European Central Bank raised interest rates, deepening economic stagnation worldwide.

Countries which borrowed heavily during the earlier decade of unconventional monetary policies – especially ‘quantitative easing’, offering easy credit – now have to cope with increasingly unbearable debt burdens, particularly in the global South.

Earlier modest progress in reducing poverty – now termed ‘extreme poverty’ – and food insecurity has slowed sharply, if not worse. For many of the world’s poorest, progress has not only stopped but even been reversed.

The World Bank currently defines the poor as those with daily per capita incomes under US$2.15 in 2017 prices. It estimated those deemed poor fell from 1.87bn – 31% of the world’s population – in 1998 to a forecast of 690mn (9%) in 2023.

The rate of decline of poverty has slowed sharply: global poverty is forecast to fall by a little over three percentage points during 2013-23 – very much less than the 14 percentage points in the decade before 2013.

Poorest mainly in poor countries

The pace of poverty decline has slowed most in the world’s poorest nations. Wolf defines these countries as those deemed eligible for concessional loans from the World Bank Group’s soft-lending arm, the International Development Association (IDA).

Seventy-five countries are now considered eligible for IDA resources, including 39 in Africa. Some – e.g., Bangladesh, Nigeria and Pakistan – can also borrow on costlier terms from financial markets and the Group’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

In IDA-eligible countries, those in extreme poverty fell from 48% in 1998 to 26% in 2023. But this only involved a single percentage point decline over 2013-23, compared to 14 percentage points in the decade before.

Extreme poverty has mainly declined in better-off middle-income countries, with 497 million poor in IDA-eligible countries. With 72% of the world’s total of 691 million poor in IDA-eligible nations, the remaining 193 million were in other countries.

The population share in extreme poverty in countries not IDA-eligible fell from a fifth in 1998 to 3% in 2023, falling by only four percentage points during 2013-23. Expecting modest overall growth, Wolf expects this 3% share will be largely eliminated by 2030.

Hence, he argues that extreme poverty can only end if attention and resources are focused on the world’s poorest countries, where poverty is most concentrated and deeply entrenched.

Unequal debt burdens

Government debt is widespread, but especially debilitating in countries where the poor are most concentrated. The World Bank’s last International Debt Report notes such countries depend too much on unreliable and expensive funding.

The report acknowledges, “For the poorest countries, debt has become a nearly paralysing burden: 28 countries eligible to borrow from [IDA] are now at high risk of debt distress. Eleven are in distress.”

During 2012-21, the external debt share of IDA-eligible countries owed to private creditors jumped from 11.2% to 28.0%! Their debt service payments more than tripled from $26bn in 2012 to $89bn in 2022, as interest due jumped from $6.4bn to $23.6bn!

Meanwhile, the share of bondholders and other private lenders in total government debt fell from 37% in 2021 to 14% in 2022! As the US Fed raised interest rates sharply during 2022-23, investors dumped ‘high-risk’ poor borrowers, lending much less to those in most need.

With this ‘perfect storm’, debt distress should come as no surprise. The 2023 International Debt Report found 56% – over half – of IDA-eligible countries at risk of such distress.

Distress of the poorest

Wolf argues it is in rich nations’ interest and their obligation to provide poor countries with far more concessional finance. But such funding has actually declined in recent decades, especially with the end of the first Cold War over three decades ago.

The IDA is using its 20th replenishment for July 2022 to June 2025 to provide financing on concessional terms. The World Bank president has argued for a much bigger new replenishment ostensibly to accelerate growth, reduce poverty and address other challenges in the poorest countries.

IDA-eligible countries include many of the world’s worst-managed nations, often very fragile, vulnerable to shocks, and stuck in “hard to escape” poverty. But their problems have become pretexts to withhold or withdraw concessional finance from those most in need.

Much more concessional finance and other resources are needed for poor nations to develop sustainably. But reducing sustainable development to simply eliminating poverty, nowadays with climate action, will condemn the poorest developing countries to backwardness.

World financial arrangements have been crucial in undermining fair, sustainable development in poor countries. While it will be critical to enable these nations to overcome their current and imminent predicaments, far more fundamental reforms must quickly follow.

As the poorest developing countries are both weak and vulnerable, needed reforms are nowhere on the horizon. Instead, the ‘international community’ continues to kick the can down the road instead of undertaking bold reforms for the short and medium term.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

Original source: Inter Press Service

Image credit: Some rights reserved by Friends of the Earth International, flickr creative commons

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Can the IMF and the World Bank really be changed?

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 11:32:00 +0000

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A geopolitical bias, outdated governance and a too market-oriented framework are only some of the structural deficits of these institutions, writes Jayati Ghosh for IPS Journal.

As the Bretton Woods institutions complete 80 years of existence – since they were agreed upon at an allies’ conference on a postwar financial and monetary order in the New Hampshire town – some stocktaking is inevitable. This is, however, a rather depressing exercise.

The international financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and what came to be known as the World Bank, were created in a buzz of optimism about the potential for international economic co-operation as the Second World War was coming to a close. But their functioning has fallen far short of what the architects of the system had hoped for at the time.

In their first decade, both institutions were heavily focused on lending for reconstruction. Thereafter, when lower-income countries did start receiving funds, the conditionalities associated with the loans – heavily oriented towards ‘fiscal discipline’, expressed as austerity and privatisation of public goods and services – became highly controversial and very often did not deliver the desired outcomes. Through the debt crises of the developing world in the 1980s and 90s, the IMF effectively became the debt collector, enforcing programmes designed to benefit (or even save) the creditor banks based in the Global North.

So well-known was this pattern that by the early part of this century, most lower-income countries had opted for self-insurance, holding excess foreign-exchange reserves to avoid having to approach the IMF. The institution was in decline, with few client countries, and increasingly irrelevant.

It was, ironically, saved by the global financial crisis, when G20 countries decided to use the IMF as the conduit for rescue funds. Thereafter, the eurozone crisis became yet another opportunity for the IMF to provide very large (and controversial) loans — and since then, it has been very much back in business.

The underlying politics of the choice of recipients and the varying amounts of loans offered have unfortunately become even more evident. A record loan of (ultimately) $57 bn was offered in 2018 to the then president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, because of his closeness to the United States president, Donald Trump, and his willingness to engage in blatantly neoliberal policies. That loan was so poorly designed that it was associated with massive outflows of private capital, so that in a few years, Argentina was back in a debt crisis, with Macri’s successor having to clean up the mess.

Fit for purpose?

The deeply geopolitical nature of the operations and the problems with the programmes are not the only reasons why the revival of the IMF as the supposed financial stabiliser of the global economy is problematic. There is a real question about whether the IMF and the World Bank are fit for purpose in a global economy that has changed dramatically.

During those eight decades, there has been a transformation in the relative sizes and significance of national economies, while, among other trends, private financial flows have risen markedly. The institutions now betray major inadequacies in their organisation and functioning.

The sharply increasing economic and ecological inequalities across the world are thereby accentuated, creating social and political tensions and geopolitical conflicts that are ever more intense. Humanity faces common challenges that require global public investment on a large scale. But the IMF and the World Bank are too slow, unwieldy and (let’s admit) miserly in their responses, exacerbating rather than assuaging these problems.

Some of this is because of the outdated governance of both institutions. Quotas and voting rights are skewed heavily in favour of a few rich economies with a small minority of the world’s people. This is now even more difficult to justify, given those states’ diminished shares of global output and world trade, which obviously affects their credibility and legitimacy. The ‘gentlemen’s conventions’ on the leadership of these institutions – an American at the head of the World Bank, a European at the head of the IMF – can no longer be justified at all.

More open, transparent and democratic processes must be introduced for choosing the leadership. The IMF’s executive board should be expanded to ensure more representation from global-majority countries, especially from Africa. For important decisions, a double-majority voting mechanism would ensure that decisions had the support of principal shareholders as well as the majority. There should also be a general increase in quotas and shares to reflect the changed contours of the global economy.

Changes in functioning may be even more important. For too long, both institutions have operated within a narrow and excessively market-oriented economic framework. This has repeatedly failed to resolve the problems of indebted countries and those with foreign-exchange difficulties, and is unable to address the big questions that fall outside the very restrictive and unrealistic assumptions informing the underlying economic model.

The result has been the imposition of conditions associated with lack of development, extreme volatility and periodic crises in many countries, as well as a repetitive need for assistance. The economic model must change to take account of demand-side factors, the multipliers of public investment, the impact of specific policies on social and economic rights (employment, economic inequalities, access to basic goods and services, social protection and environmental conditions) and climate change.

Many things could be done even within the current restrictive framework of the institutions. One of the most obvious is the issuance of new special drawing rights (SDR) – the liquidity created by the IMF – and subsequent annual new issues in line with the increase in global gross domestic product.

The United Nations High Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism (of which I was a member) has recommended that the IMF introduce a system of ‘selective SDR allocation’, rather than new allocations being based on quotas which disproportionately provide SDR to rich countries that do not need or use them. Only those countries that face weak external positions would then receive additional SDR, automatically triggered by specific conditions — such as climate, terms-of-trade or interest-rates shocks or capital flows resulting from global dislocations.

Similarly, with regard to sovereign debt, the IMF should actively create a multilateral legal framework ensuring the participation of all public and private creditors in debt workouts. Relief packages should promote a revival of economic activity and the progressive realisation of human rights.

These reforms are obvious, but they appear very unlikely given the resistance of a few rich countries, intent on preserving their power in these institutions. Given so many rapid and often unforeseen changes in the global economy, such foot-dragging could doom the institutions to irrelevance once more. With multilateral action so urgently needed, that would be not just a missed opportunity but a tragedy.

Original source: IPS Journal / Social Europe

Image credit: Some rights reserved by ICGFM, flickr creative commons

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Global governance, Finance and debt

COP28で、国際金融アーキテクチャを変革する時が来ました

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 17:47:00 +0000

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国際金融システムは化石燃料を永らえさせ、脆弱な国々に借金を負わせて、公正なエネルギー転換を遅らせている、とオイル・チェンジ・インターナショナルのブロンウェン・タッカー氏とシェリーン・タラート氏は書いています。

第二次世界大戦後、世界銀行と国際通貨基金（IMF）が中心となり、新たな国際経済ルールと公的金融機関が設立されました。

この国際金融アーキテクチャは、低所得国や戦争で荒廃した国の再建と発展を支援することを目的として構築されました。

しかし、この制度には、富裕国に意思決定において大き過ぎる発言権を与えるなど、当初から根本的な欠陥がありました。80年が経った今、国際金融政策、貿易、税金、債務を管理するルールは、世界的な不平等を促進するだけでなく、気候変動も促進しており、根本的な再考が必要です。

過去8年間、気候変動の加速的な影響がますます顕著になり、化石燃料を段階的に廃止する必要があるという世界的なコンセンサスにもかかわらず、世界銀行は石油、ガス、石炭プロジェクトに少なくとも170億ドルの資金を費やしてきました。

OECDから世界貿易機関に至るまで、残りのアーキテクチャはさらに大規模な化石燃料補助金を促進しています。

これらの補助金の影響は明らかです。2023年だけでも、洪水によりケニア、ギリシャ、ブルガリア、リビアが壊滅的な被害を受け；熱帯低気圧がマダガスカル、モザンビーク、マラウイを襲い；そして極度の暑さ、山火事、干ばつは他の数え切れないほどの国に広がっています。

気候変動に対する無策の中心にあるのは、気候変動を引き起こすことにおいてほとんど責任のない国が最悪の影響を被っているという事実です。新型コロナウイルス感染症とエネルギーと食料の価格高騰に未だに苦しむ低所得国にとって、気候変動や異常気象への対応は不可能になっています。

気候変動の影響を受けやすい国の多くは、国民を守るために必要な援助や適応への資金提供をIMFに頼ってきましたが、そのために莫大な借金を背負い、法外な利子や課徴金を支払っています。

平均して、アフリカ諸国が国際市場でお金を借りるには富裕国に比べて5倍の費用がかかり、低所得国全体では気候変動への対応よりも12倍の金額を債務返済に費やしています。

IEAは、化石燃料を段階的に廃止し、100%再生可能経済を構築するには、低所得国が気候変動への取り組みに年間2兆8,000億ドルを費やす必要があると推定しています。これは現在支出されている金額の4倍です。すでに固定化されている気候への影響に対処するには、さらに何兆もの資金が必要です。

気候変動と不正な金融システムの両方に対する歴史的責任を考えると、これらの費用の大部分を支払わなければならないのは富裕国の政府です。しかし彼らは何十年もの間、その余裕はないと言い続け、代わりに少額の公的資金を活用して必要なものへの民間投資を呼び込むことができると提案してきました。

しかし、このアプローチでは必要な資金を供給できずに何度も失敗し、不当な債務負担が増大することが多々ありました。

真実は、これらの費用をカバーするための公的資金が不足しているわけではありません。COP28では、富裕国の指導者が重要な最初の一歩を踏み出す必要があります。

私たちは彼らが化石燃料への資金提供をやめ、代わりにその資金を気候変動対策に充てるために早期の進展を積み上げる必要があります。彼らは金利を引き下げ、不当な債務を帳消しにすることに同意しなければなりません。

そして、汚染産業への課税や超富裕層への課税、特別引出権（SDR）として知られるIMF準備資産の再分配などの新たな資金源を承認しなければなりません。

これらの措置は私たち全員に利益をもたらします。開発と気候変動に対する国際公的資金のより大規模かつ公平な流れは、世界的に公正なエネルギー移行を可能にし、雇用を創出し、紛争や強制移住のリスクを軽減します。

これを求めているのは市民社会だけではありません。こうした呼びかけには、バルバドスのミア・モトリー首相、ケニアのウィリアム・ルト大統領、ブラジルのルーラ・ダ・シルバ大統領、コロンビアのグスタボ・ペトロ大統領のほか、ジェイソン・ヒッケル氏やマリアナ・マッツカート氏などの著名な学者も参加しています。

私たちの要求が合わさって、ここ数十年で見たことのないほど、世界の金融構造を変える勢いが生まれました。

今日はCOP28のファイナンスデーです。富裕国の指導者には、政治的意志と団結を示し、気候危機に立ち向かうのに適した民主的な金融構造に向けた機運を高める大きな機会があります。

注目すべき重要な瞬間には、気候変動に基金に関するハイレベルラウンドテーブルや、気候変動にレジリエントな債務条項、SDR、イノベーションに関するセッションが含まれます。

気候変動の影響を受けやすい国々には信頼できる手頃な資金が必要であり、国際金融機関はそれを提供するために変革される必要があります。

世界が「地獄のような」3℃の温暖化に向かう中、これが1.5℃の可能性を残す唯一の方法です。発展途上国は最前線にあり、世界は彼らにその責任を負っています。

ブロンウェン・タッカー氏はオイル・チェンジ・インターナショナルのグローバル公共財務マネージャーであり、シェリーン・タラート氏は経済、開発、生態学的正義のためのMenaFemMovementのディレクターです。

Original source: Thomson Reuters Foundation

Image credit: Some rights reserved by Adam Cohn, flickr creative commons

Filed under:

Environment, Finance and debt

At COP28, it’s time to transform the global financial architecture

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 11:36:00 +0000

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The global finance system is giving fossil fuels a lifeline, indebting vulnerable countries and delaying a just energy transition, writes Bronwen Tucker and Shereen Talaat for Oil Change International.

In the wake of World War II, a new set of international economic rules and public financial institutions were created, with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) at the centre.

This global financial architecture was set up with the aim of helping low-income and war-ravaged countries to rebuild and develop.

But this system had a fundamental flaw from the start, giving rich countries an outsized say in decision making. Eighty years on, the rules governing international monetary policy, trade, tax and debt are not just fuelling global inequality, but climate change too. They need a fundamental rethink.

In the last eight years, in spite of the increasingly visible accelerating impacts of climate change, and global consensus that we need to phase out fossil fuels, the World Bank has spent at least $17 billion funding oil, gas, and coal projects.

From the OECD to the World Trade Organization, the rest of the architecture is facilitating even larger fossil fuel subsidies.

The impacts of these handouts are clear. In 2023 alone, floods have devastated Kenya, Greece, Bulgaria,and Libya; tropical cyclones have torn through Madagascar, Mozambique and Malawi; and extreme heat, wildfires and droughts have spread across countless other countries.

At the heart of climate inaction is the fact that countries who are doing the least to cause climate change are experiencing the worst impacts. Responding to climate change and extreme weather has become unaffordable for low-income nations still reeling from Covid-19 and energy and food price hikes.

Many climate-vulnerable countries have looked to the IMF to finance the aid and adaptation necessary to protect their populations, but this has saddled them with huge debt, on which they pay exorbitant interest and surcharges.

On average, it costs African countries five times more to borrow money on international markets than rich countries, and low income countries overall spend 12 times more on debt repayments than addressing climate change.

To phase out fossil fuels and build a 100% renewable economy, the IEA estimates that low- income countries will need to spend $2.8 trillion a year on tackling climate change. That’s four times what is currently being spent. Trillions more are needed to address the climate impacts already locked in.

Given their historic responsibility for both climate change and our rigged financial system, it is rich country governments that must pay the bulk of these costs. But for decades, they have said they cannot afford to, proposing instead that small amounts of public finance can be used to attract private investment in what is needed.

But this approach has repeatedly failed to deliver the needed funds, and often added to unfair debt burdens.

The truth is, there is no shortage of public money to cover these costs. At COP28, we need wealthy country leaders to take some key first steps.

We need them to build on early progress to stop funding fossil fuels and put this money towards climate solutions instead. They must agree to reduce interest rates and cancel unfair debts.

And they must approve new sources of funding like levies on polluting industries, taxes on the super rich, and redistributing IMF reserve assets known as Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).

These measures will benefit all of us. Larger and fairer flows of international public funding for development and climate change will enable a global just energy transition, create jobs, and reduce the risk of conflict and forced migration.

It’s not just civil society asking for this. These calls have been voiced by Barbados’s Mia Mottley, Kenya’s William Ruto, Brazil’s Lula da Silva and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, as well as leading academics such as Jaso Hickel and Mariana Mazucatto.

Together, our demands have created more momentum to change the global financial architecture than we have seen in decades.

Today is Finance Day at COP28. Wealthy country leaders have a huge opportunity to demonstrate political will and solidarity, and to increase momentum towards a democratic financial architecture fit to tackle the climate crisis.

Key moments to watch out for include the High Level Roundtable on Climate Finance and sessions on Climate Resilient Debt Clauses, SDRs and Innovation.

Climate-vulnerable countries need affordable and dependable finance, and international financial institutions need to transform to provide it.

With the world on track for a ‘hellish’ 3C of heating, this is the only way 1.5 will remain a possibility. Developing countries are on the frontline and the world owes them this.

Bronwen Tucker is the global public finance manager at Oil Change International, and Shereen Talaat is the director of the MenaFemMovement for Economic, Development and Ecological Justice.

Original source: Thomson Reuters Foundation

Image credit: Some rights reserved by Adam Cohn, flickr creative commons

Filed under:

Environment, Finance and debt

国連、歴史的な税制改革計画を採択

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 20:54:00 +0000

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国連加盟国は今日、租税枠組条約の制定プロセスを開始し、世界の租税ルールの決定方法を完全に変える決議を圧倒的多数で採択しました。¹

この枠組条約により、最終的には国際租税ルールに関する意思決定が、60年以上にわたって行われてきた富裕国の小さなクラブであるOECDから国連に移されることが可能になります。

「これは、世界中の人々の利益のために、グローバル・サウスの国々がもたらした歴史的な勝利だ。タックス・ヘイブンと企業ロビイストは、あまりにも長い間、OECDの世界の税制政策にあまりにも大きな影響力を持ってきた。今日、私たちは私たち全員に影響を与える国際租税ルールに対する権力を取り戻し始める」とタックス・ジャスティス・ネットワークの最高責任者アレックス・コブハムは述べました。 (以下に続く)

今日の国連投票の結果は、何十年も達成するのは不可能だと考えられてきました。租税ルールに関する意思決定を国連に持ち込もうとした最後の試みは 1970年代でした。この試みの失敗により、同様の試みは50年近く制止されました。

昨年、そして特に投票前のここ数週間は、今日の決議に対してOECDのほか、米国、英国、EUのOECD加盟国からも強い反対が見られました。特に英国とEUはここ数週間、国連のプロセスを「抹殺」しようとしており、「不誠実」に交渉を行っているとして、国連の交渉担当者から批判を集めています。² 世界最強の経済大国の抵抗にもかかわらず、決議案が成功したのは稀な功績であり、歴史的に拒否されてきた国際租税ルールについて有意義な決定権を求めるOECD加盟国以外の国々からの圧倒的な要求を示しています。

国連決議から条約に関する言及を削除することによって決議を無力化しようとする英国の土壇場での試みは、ほぼ2対1で敗北しました：107か国が決議を拒否しました。55か国がこれを支持しました。³

修正されていない決議案はさらに大きな差で支持されました。国連参加国のほぼ3分の2（125）が改革に賛成票を投じました。この決議案には48カ国が反対票を投じ、9カ国が棄権しました。米国、英国、およびすべての EU加盟国はこの決議に反対票を投じました。⁴

この決議の採択は、世界中の政府関係者、経済学者、市民社会団体によって広く祝われています。

アフリカ連合は投票直後に次のような声明を発表しました：

「国際租税に関する議題設定と規範設定に参加するための完全に包括的なプロセスを国連で確立しようとするグローバル・サウス諸国の数十年にわたる闘いが、今や現実となった。

「我々は、この協力の精神を基礎にして、我々の発展のためにリソースを緊急に動員するために、効果的な国際租税協力に関する国連枠組条約に合意することを心待ちにしている」

タックス・ジャスティス・ネットワークの最高責任者であるアレックス・コブハム氏は次のように述べています：

「これは、グローバル・サウスの国々が世界中の人々の利益のためにもたらした歴史的な勝利だ。タックスヘイブンと企業ロビイストは、あまりにも長い間、OECDの世界の税制政策に多大な影響を与えてきた。今日、我々は我々全員に影響を与える世界的な税制に対する権力を取り戻し始めている。

「大多数の国は今日、OECDから離脱する用意があり、代わりに国連で国際租税ルールの交渉を開始すると宣言した。我々はすべての国がこれらの交渉に参加し、世界中の人々の経済的繁栄の新たな章を始めるよう呼びかける」

ノート

Here is the full text of the draft resolution that was adopted today with no amendments.
See the FT’s article on negotiations here.
The total tally of the votes on the amendments is available on our live blog here.
The total tally of the votes on the resolution is available on our live blog here.

Original source: Tax Justice Network

Image credit: Some rights reserved by United Nations Photo, flickr creative commons

Filed under:

Inequality, Corporate power, Finance and debt, New economic paradigms

New push for debt relief to help developing world fund climate action

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 15:52:00 +0000

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The fight against the climate emergency is being hampered by a debt crisis that involves the world’s poorest countries paying more than 12 times as much to their creditors as they are spending on measures to tackle the impact of global heating, a campaign group has warned.

As the Cop28 meeting opened in the United Arab Emirates, Development Finance International (DFI) said a new round of comprehensive and deep debt cancellation was needed to free up much-needed investment in climate emergency adaptation.

A study of spending in 42 countries by DFI found debt service payments represented 32.7% of the budget in 2023 on average, while responding to the climate crisis stood at 2.5%.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, plans to spend just 0.12% of its budget on adapting to the climate crisis in 2024 while payments to creditors are expected to be 29%, the report said. Most of the countries studied expect to spend less than 2% of their budgets on climate adaptation – and many would be investing less than 1%.

Matthew Martin, DFI’s executive director, said a major programme of debt cancellation on the scale of the initiatives of the late 1990s and early 2000s was needed. Debt service averaged 38% across 139 countries in the global south, rising to 57.5% for the low-income countries.

Martin said: “If the international community is serious about confronting the climate crisis, they need to get serious about comprehensive debt relief for a wide range of countries.

“If we bring countries’ debt service down to 15% of their revenues, as under the heavily indebted poor country initiative, we will have enough money to confront the climate crisis head-on.”

The report by DFI, a debt campaign group, said debt was already playing a key role in preventing countries from scaling up investments in tackling global heating.

The struggle to repay creditors might even be exacerbating the climate crisis, with countries forced to maximise exports to generate the foreign exchange required to meet the high cost of servicing debt. This has often meant continuing fossil fuel extraction that was profitable in the short term and even expanding fossil fuel projects, potentially delaying their own energy transitions in the process.

Attempts to reduce debt burdens are being conducted on a country-by-country basis under the Common Framework, a mechanism established by the G20 group of leading developed and developing countries at the start of the global pandemic in 2020. Only a handful of countries have so far received any debt relief, and DFI said that, even then, the Common Framework had failed to free up room for spending on climate adaptation.

In a separate move, more than 550 economists, development and climate experts, NGOs and activists, including leading economists Thomas Picketty and Jason Hickel, philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò and climate activist Vanessa Nakate, have signed an open letter calling for debt cancellation at Cop28.

The statement calls for the cancellation of the debts of lower-income countries “on the frontline of the climate emergency” and for rich countries to significantly increase levels of grant-based climate finance.

Further resources

Yanis Varoufakis, Thomas Picketty, Vanessa Nakate and leading experts call for debt cancellation at COP28 - Eurodad

Original source: The Guardian

Image credit: Climate Debt Justice

Filed under:

Poverty and hunger, Inequality, Environment, Finance and debt

UN adopts plans for historic tax reform

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 14:02:00 +0000

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Countries at the UN have adopted by a landslide majority today a resolution to begin the process of establishing a framework convention on tax and completely change how global tax rules are decided.¹

The framework convention can eventually move decision-making on global tax rules from the OECD – a small club of rich countries where this has sat for over 60 years – to the UN.

“This is a historic victory delivered by countries of the global South, for the benefit of people all around the world.. Tax havens and corporate lobbyists have had too much influence on global tax policy at the OECD for too long. Today, we start to take back power over global tax rules that affect all of us,” said Alex Cobham, chief executive at the Tax Justice Network. (cont’d below)

The result of today’s UN vote has for decades been considered impossible to achieve. The last attempt to bring decision-making on tax rules to the UN was in the 1970’s. The failure of the attempt dissuaded any similar attempts for nearly 50 years.

The past year, and these last few weeks before the vote especially, saw strong opposition to today’s resolution from the OECD and from OECD members the US, UK and EU as well. The UK and EU in particular drew criticism in recent weeks from negotiators at the UN for attempting to “kill” the UN process and for negotiating in “bad faith”.² The success of the resolution despite the resistance from the world’s strongest economies is a rare feat, and demonstrates the overwhelming demand from countries outside the OECD for the meaningful voice on global tax rules which they have historically been denied.

A last-minute attempt by the UK to defang the UN resolution, by removing any mention of a convention from the resolution, was defeated by nearly 2 to 1: 107 countries rejected the resolution; 55 countries supported it.³

The unamended resolution was supported by an even bigger margin. Nearly two-thirds (125) of countries at the UN voted in favour of the reforms. 48 countries voted against the resolution and 9 abstained. The US, UK and all EU member countries voted against the resolution.⁴

The adoption of the resolution is being widely celebrated by government officials, economists and civil society organisations around the world.

The Africa Union published a statement shortly after the vote saying:

“The decades’ long fight of Global South countries to establish a fully inclusive process at the United Nations to participate in agenda setting and norm setting on international tax is now a reality.

“We look forward to building on this spirit of cooperation and agreeing on an effective UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation to urgently mobilise resources for our development.”

Alex Cobham, chief executive at the Tax Justice Network said:

“This is a historic victory delivered by the countries of the global South, for the benefit of people all around the world. Tax havens and corporate lobbyists have had too much influence on global tax policy at the OECD for too long. Today, we start to take back power over the global tax rules that affect all of us.

“The great majority of countries have declared today that they are ready to move on from the OECD, and will start negotiating global tax rules at the UN instead. We invite all countries to join in these negotiations and begin a new chapter of economic prosperity for people everywhere.”

Notes

Here is the full text of the draft resolution that was adopted today with no amendments.
See the FT’s article on negotiations here.
The total tally of the votes on the amendments is available on our live blog here.
The total tally of the votes on the resolution is available on our live blog here.

Original source: Tax Justice Network

Image credit: Some rights reserved by United Nations Photo, flickr creative commons

Filed under:

Inequality, Corporate power, Finance and debt, New economic paradigms