High-level Roundtable at the 2023 Spring Meetings: Scaling up Climate Finance in Times of Debt Crisis

The Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance estimates that $1 trillion per year in the form of external finance is needed in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) other than China to accomplish the Paris Agreement’s target and the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

Mobilising private capital has been a cornerstone of the climate finance and SDG finance agendas. Thus far, however, the amounts of private capital that have been mobilised have been disappointingly low, raising serious questions regarding prevailing blended finance approaches. Worryingly, the mobilisation of private capital is now also hampered by growing debt problems in many EMDEs. According to a recent UNDP analysis, 52 EMDEs, many of them among the most climate vulnerable, are currently suffering from severe debt problems. The escalating sovereign debt crisis is going to make the mobilisation of private investment, both domestic and international, difficult if not impossible in these countries. 

Against this backdrop, this roundtable will discuss what policy interventions will be needed to address the debt crisis and create the conditions to successfully scale up private climate investment, including through domestic financial resource mobilisation. Questions that will be addressed include: 

• What measures should be taken to effectively address the debt crisis to enable fresh investment in climate action and revive the Agenda 2030? 

• What are key levers to mobilise private capital? What instruments work and don’t work to mobilise private capital at scale? What are alternatives to project based de-risking approaches? 

The aim of the roundtable is to identify the most promising policy approaches and instruments that will help to overcome current bottlenecks at private capital mobilisation in an increasingly difficult global macroeconomic and financial environment. 

The high-level roundtable will be held as a closed-door event at the World Bank. After a brief presentation framing the issues, we will have a moderated discussion involving all participants. The event is co-organised by the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development

Speakers

Rola Dashti (UN ESCWA) Indermit Gill (World Bank), Shari Spiegel (UN DESA), Ulrich Volz (SOAS) Jürgen Zattler (BMZ) 

Programme 

Welcome 

• Jürgen Zattler, Director-General for International Development Policy, German Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development 

Framing the issue 

• Ulrich Volz, Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Finance, SOAS University of London & Senior Research Fellow, German Institute for Development and Sustainability 

Short inputs 

• Rola Dashti, Executive Secretary, UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia 
• Indermit Gill, Chief Economist, World Bank 
• Avinash Persaud, Special Envoy to the Prime Minister of Barbados on Investment and Financial Services 
• Shari Spiegel, Chief of Policy Analysis & Development, Financing for Sustainable Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations 

Open discussion with contributions by all roundtable participants.