IMF places climate change at heart of its work: Managing Director

Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Kristalina Georgieva made her comments during a speech to the high-level session of the Climate Adaptation Summit 2021 that was launched virtually on Monday

Combining steadily rising carbon prices with a green infrastructure push can enhance the global GDP over the next 15 years by about 0.7 percent and generate work for millions of people, according to Georgieva.

She made her comments during a speech to the high-level session of the Climate Adaptation Summit 2021 that was launched virtually on Monday.

The IMF official affirmed that climate resilience is a critical priority for all countries for now and years to come.

Georgieva underscored four areas countries need to work on concerning climate change, including integrating climate in countries’ annual economic assessments.

“In highly vulnerable countries, we focus on adaptation; and we are building up mitigation analysis, including carbon pricing, in our assessments of large emitters,” said Georgieva.

She added that including climate related financial stability risks in countries’ financial sector,

surveillance is also needed through standardised disclosure of these risks, enhanced stress tests and assessments of supervisory frameworks.

Meanwhile, scaling up climate in countries’ capacity development is imperative as well, in order to help equip finance ministries and central banks with the skills needed to take climate considerations into account, according to Georgieva.

She also said that mainstreaming climate indicators in macroeconomic data is critical in the time being, revealing that the IMF will launch a Climate Change Dashboard during 2021 that includes indicators set to track the economic impact of climate risks and the measures taken to mitigate them.