Professor Volz delivers keynote speech addressing the global south's sovereign debt crisis at T20 summit

Leaders from global think tanks, academia, public and private sectors, and civil society gather at the Itamaraty Palace in Rio de Janeiro to present policy recommendations for G20 leaders.

Professor Ulrich Volz, the Director of the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance, delivered a keynote speech at the T20 Brazil Summit. 

Leaders from global think tanks, academia, public and private sectors, and civil society gathered at the Itamaraty Palace in Rio de Janeiro on 11-12 November to present policy recommendations for G20 leaders. The T20 is a G20 engagement group that brings together think tanks and research centres from G20 members and guest countries and organisations. Under the Brazilian T20, Professor Volz has served as one of the co-chairs of the T20 Task Force on Reforming the International Financial Architecture.

In his keynote speech, Professor Volz provided recommendations for addressing the sovereign debt crisis in the Global South. Professor Volz highlighted that many developing countries are caught in a vicious cycle of debt, climate change and underinvestment, and that the existing frameworks for sovereign debt workout have not delivered the speed or scale of relief necessary to drive transformative investments in climate and development goals. 

Because the current debt governance frameworks are structurally biased against debtor countries, governments of countries with unsustainable debt burdens are doing everything they can to avoid a default by cutting expenditures, including on critical social spending and investments in climate action. 

As a consequence, a large number of countries is now defaulting on development and climate, while the vicious cycle of debt, climate change and underinvestment is accelerating further. Professor Volz called on the G20 and the Bretton Woods institutions to pave the way for an ambitious debt relief initiative, linking debt relief to investments in climate and development goals.

Besides his engagement in the T20, Professor Volz has also served in the Group of Experts of the G20 Task Force for the Global Mobilization against Climate Change (TF-CLIMA). The Group of Experts comprises 12 experts who were appointed by the Brazilian G20 Presidency. The Group of Experts recently launched its final report with recommendations to the G20 governments.

Header Image credit: Cristofer Sewell via Unsplash.