President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is in Paris, France where he will be taking part in the Global Financing Summit convened by French President Emmanuel Macron. This is Tinubu’s first official trip abroad since he was sworn in as president on May 29, 2023.
According to reports, the two-day summit, holding at Palais Brongniart from today, Thursday, June 22 to tomorrow, Friday, June 23, will consider pinning down a roadmap for easing the debt burdens of low-income countries while freeing up more funds for climate financing.
Organizers say the summit, which brings dozens of world leaders in the French capital, will attempt to forge a top-level consensus on how to progress a number of initiatives currently struggling in bodies like the G20, IMF-World Bank and United Nations.
Top on the agenda is debt relief which was suggested by a group of developing countries, led by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, dubbed the ‘Bridgetown Initiative’, a plan to reform development financing.
Though binding decisions are not expected, observers said that some strong commitments should be made about financing poor countries meet the 2030 United Nations SDG targets.
Interestingly, nearly eighty years after the Bretton Woods Agreement created the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), leaders aim to squeeze more financing from multilateral lenders for the countries that need it most.
Observers also said that an announcement will be made after the summit that a $100 billion target has been set aside through the IMF for vulnerable countries.
But beyond the issue of debt burden and debt relief, it’s particularly observed that the Heads of state, finance leaders and activists from around the world are actually converging in Paris will seek ways to overhaul the world’s development banks (IMF and World Bank) and help them weather a stormier world.
While restructuring debt will be part of the summit, climate will be the main focus of discussion. Observers argue that the resolve of western leaders will be tested over climate action.
The World Bank and IMF have been criticized for not factoring climate change into lending decisions and being dominated by wealthy climate offenders like the U.S., calling the shots.
While those are the primary problems to solve, some doubt the splashy summit led by French President Macron will be able to take major strides to correct those challenges.
Ahead of the summit, 13 world Heads of state including Macron, US President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, President Lula Da Silva of Brazil, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Senegal’s Macky Sall collectively penned an article titled “A Green Transition That Leaves No One Behind” published yesterday in Project Syndicate in which they outlined the theme of the conference. They noted that, “an estimated 120 million people (this figure is tardy and highly conservative) have been pushed into extreme poverty in the last three years, and we are still far from achieving our United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. We should thus place people at the center of a strategy to increase human welfare everywhere.”
The world leaders, who sounded atypically committed in their message, declared, “We, leaders of diverse economies throughout the world, are united in our determination to forge a new global consensus. We will use the Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact on June 22-23 as a decisive political moment to recover development gains lost in recent years and to accelerate progress towards the SDGs, including just transitions. We are clear about our strategy: development and climate commitments should be fulfilled and, in line with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, we need to leverage all sources of finance, including official development assistance, domestic resources, and private investment…” Tbe world leaders pledged sweeping reforms and promised “to advance concrete actions that deliver on the promise of the SDGs, for our prosperity, people, and planet”. Lofty statement but still the world would want to see more meaningful commitments.
Observers like Masood Ahmed, president of the Center for Global Development, a Washington,-based think tank, isn’t expecting much concrete action from the gathering but he said that “we’ve got to think much bigger, much bolder. We need to be willing to change.”
Talking about debt burden, the rising global interest rates have left a growing number of low-income countries dependent on IMF funding while the most distressed – Ethiopia, Ghana, Sri Lanka and Zambia – have had little choice but to default.
Organizers say the summit will end with a summary of commitments, including a roadmap for what to expect from this year’s meeting of the Group of 20 major economies and U.N. climate conference.
Like many Nigerians, I will like to know what position President Tinubu would take on these burning issues. By now, the president must have received detailed briefs from foreign ministry officials and top diplomats on the country’s previous stance on climate and debt restructuring. Are we likely to see a change in the tact and approach to these matters or would there be consistency in policy direction? We know former president Muhammadu Buhari had consistently pushed for a pragmatic approach to the climate issue, while campaigning for debt cancellation for low and medium-income countries.
In my view, President Tinubu should shrug off his liberal-mindedness, capitalist leaning toga and present a position that’s in the best interest of Africa and Nigeria in particular. He should urge the development banks (IMF and World Bank) to urgently reform and evolve with the changing world.
On the climate, it behooves on President Tinubu to remind the developed countries and their leaders to be firm with their commitments of helping developing countries transit their economies away from carbon-intensive energy sources and expand access to clean energy.
Taking into account the inequities that climate-vulnerable nations face, I would argue that pursuing measures in a world where global warming has already occurred has to be done with subtlety and reckoning with the fact that developing nations are in a foot race against richer countries, which have been massive polluters and also hold the purse strings.
More specific reform proposals are likely to come in the next few weeks from a G20 panel created to recommend changes at the IMF, the World Bank and other global development agencies.
One of the biggest challenges will be bringing together nations with diverging interests and growing geopolitical tensions, including between the U.S., Russia and China.
The combination of these geopolitical tensions, the growing relevance of BRICS, suspicion of globalization and of institutions makes it harder to follow through with actions.
