Roberto Campos Neto, governor of the Banco Central do Brasil, speaking at the G20 finance ministers meeting in July 2024. © G20 Brasil
Finance ministers and central bank governors from the world’s richest and developing countries agreed on Friday to promote efforts to address climate change, including voluntary just transition plans, the group declared in its comminiqué.
Meeting in Rio de Janeiro, the G20 group said it looked forward to the development of voluntary and non-binding transition plans for corporations and financial institutions.
The communiqué also reaffirms the group’s commitment to developing how multilateral development banks (MDBs) can help address countries’ sustainable development goals.
The group welcomed the progress on debt under the G20’s common framework, including agreed debt treatments in Zambia and Ghana and called for a swift conclusion to debt treatment in Ethiopia. Climate advocates have been calling for debt reform, as sovereign debt levels have made it difficult for the global south to transition to a green economy.
“We also welcome joint efforts by all stakeholders to continue working towards enhancing debt transparency and encourage private creditors to follow,” the communiqué states.
The group also agreed to support the Brazil presidency’s call to tax the super-rich but did not agree on a specific global tax.
Brazil has proposed a mandatory 2% tax on billionaires to tackle inequality and climate change.
NGOs welcomed the groups’ agreement to support a tax on the rich. Camila Jardim, an international politics specialist at Greenpeace Brazil, called it “the first step for a shift in the global economy towards a more just and sustainable world”.
Canadian senator and climate advocated Rosa Galvez told Green Central Banking that expectations are high for the November summit in Rio.
“We need to have a whole government approach, a global approach and be more efficient, because we don’t have enough resources to tackle [issues one-by-one] and it’s completely inefficient [to do so],” she said.
One of the core issues that needs to be tackled is how to make funding accessible. The money is there, Galvez said, countries just need to rethink how it can be accessed. Canada, for example, spends billions on fossil fuel subsidies each year.
“There is money, and we don’t respect the free market, and we skew the free market, and we give this money to a record-profit-reporting sector. And it’s the same in many places… inefficient subsidies must be banned,” she said. “The cost of non-action is unaffordable.”
This page was last updated August 1, 2024
Written by
Moriah Costa is the Editor-in-Chief of Green Central Banking and has over a decade of experience writing about banking and finance. She is an award-winning American journalist based in Paris and has written for major international publications, including Reuters, The Guardian, and S&P Global. Having grown up in water-stressed Arizona, she has always had a strong interest in bringing awareness to climate and environmental issues.
