CSO Letter: IMF-Pakistan Review Pushing Pakistan Towards Climate Catastrophe

PRESS RELEASE

IMF-Pakistan review pushing Pakistan towards climate catastrophe 

Recourse has endorsed together with 37 organizations the letter by the Alliance for Climate Justice and Clean Energy (ACJCE) in Pakistan to address the IMF, asking for a climate justice approach in its assessment of the ninth review of the arrangement under the Extended Fund Facility. 

“While the IMF regional staff acknowledges the devastation of the climate-change induced floods of summer 2022, this is not reflected in the Fund’s ongoing reviews and its pre-conditions for the release of a $1.1 billion tranche which is crucial for stabilizing the economy. The falling currency, hyperinflation, rising taxes, and spiraling energy prices and production costs – especially in the renewables sector – are tied directly to harmful prior action conditions under successive IMF reviews of the EFF program. Collectively, they have created an economic environment that threatens all planning put in place to meet national climate goals and international climate obligations, and to safeguard the rights and needs of the most vulnerable.”

“Where existing interventions continue to fail the economic and environmental crisis in Pakistan, we reiterate that the IMF faces a historic choice which will shape its legacy for the 21st century. It can choose to continue on the current path, which will push the most climate-vulnerable countries like Pakistan to the brink of disaster, or it could choose a more responsible path, which understands the synergies between debt relief, non-debt creating climate finance, expanded and targeted public sector spending, increased private and public sector investment in renewable industries, and coordinating green transitions in the energy and transport sectors. If the IMF board does not act now, its actions in Pakistan could become a case study for how the Fund recklessly crippled a climate vulnerable nation of the Global South and failed to meet its global obligations towards climate justice.”

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