IMF should give poor countries $300bn a year to fight climate crisis, says Joseph Stiglitz

THE GUARDIAN

Poor countries should be provided with $300bn (£246bn) a year from the International Monetary Fund to finance their fight against the climate crisis, the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has said.

Speaking to the Guardian at the IMF’s annual meeting in Marrakech, Stiglitz said developing nations needed their equivalent of the US Inflation Reduction Act – a package of grants and subsidies designed to promote green growth and jobs.

Stiglitz said the battle against global heating would only be won if poor countries were onboard but there was no hope of them coming up with their equivalent of the act, which he said was expensive and flawed but working.

Instead, he said rich countries should support the creation of $300bn of IMF special drawing rights (SDRs) each year to finance a global green transition.

The US economist admitted it would be impossible to get his plan through the US Congress in its current deadlocked state but said he would continue to campaign for it.

“As the scale of climate change impresses itself more and more on us, we are going to need bolder things. 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.”

The need for extra money to help poorer countries cope with the effects of global heating and decarbonise their economies has been high on the agenda at the annual meeting of the IMF and its sister organisation, the World Bank, in Morocco this week.

Stiglitz, a former World Bank chief economist, said he welcomed plans to provide the bank with more capital to lend for green projects but said a far more ambitious approach was needed.

READ THE FULL STORY IN THE GUARDIAN