Debt swaps for climate and nature: a strategic approach to urgent global goals
Channel: IIED
Date: 2022-04-01

This is an edited recording of a high-level dialogue event on 3 November 2021 that was held as part of the Resilience Hub at the UN climate change conference (COP26).

With developing countries suffering from the triple crisis of debt, climate change and nature loss, debt for climate and nature swaps can provide fiscal space and address the climate financing gap across developing countries.

Through diminished debt service obligations, swaps will finance nature and climate key performance indicators including policy commitments from Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs). This would expand investment in renewable energy, marine and terrestrial conservation and land restoration.

Hosted by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), this event featured a dialogue between debtor governments and creditors to reach political commitments for more large scale, programmatic debt swaps for climate and nature.

The speakers:

0:00 Paul Steele, chief economist, IIED
00:50 Stephany Griffith Jones, financial markets director, Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University
02:04 Naadir Hassan, Hon. Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Trade, Seychelles
03:41 Dr Jeromin Zettelmeyer, deputy director, International Monetary Fund
05:31 Dr Jürgen Zattler, director general, German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development
06:47 Sonja Gibbs, managing Director and head of sustainable finance, Institute of International  Finance
08:01 Dr Wan-Ting Xiong, Chinese Acadermy of Social Sciences, and advisor to the Ministry of Finance, People's Republic of China 
10:05 Ibrahim Ameer, Minister of Finance, Republic of Maldives

Watch the full event recording via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OStJ08J1-nk

#debt #finance #nature #ResilienceHub #COP26