Stern backs $100bn IMF climate fund plan

Environmental Finance
March 11, 2010

London, 11 March: A climate fund proposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to raise $100 billion a year by 2020 has won support from climate change economics guru Nicholas Stern.

Speaking in Nairobi on Sunday, IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said: “Sustainable growth in developing countries will require large-scale, long-term investments for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The Copenhagen Accord suggests that $100 billion a year is needed by 2020, over and above existing aid commitments. This will be difficult to do with the standard approach – a series of ‘pledging conferences’ for decades to come.”

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

He said that, ultimately, financing will come from “budgetary transfers from developed countries, drawing on scaled-up carbon taxes and expanded carbon trading mechanisms”. However, these revenue sources will take time to be put in place, so an IMF ‘Green Fund’ could “act as a bridge to large-scale carbon-based financing in the medium term”.

In a subsequent interview with wire service AFP, Strauss-Kahn said that the IMF is going to publish a working paper on the Green Fund in the next couple of weeks. However, in the Nairobi speech, he stressed that the IMF would not manage the fund.

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