Advocacy Updates
Here you will find the latest updates on civil society action around the IMF and climate change, such as new reports, statements, and letters.
If you are doing advocacy work on these issues and have a document or update to share, please submit them here. We will revise this page periodically and upload new links and papers.
Submit your Updates here
2026-05
New webinar: IMF country cases - greenwashed austerity, grassroots resistance
In our latest webinar, we explored how IMF lending conditions are shaping climate and development policy across the Global South, and how civil society movements are mobilising against austerity, debt dependency and fossil fuel expansion. Speakers reflected on country experiences from Bangladesh, Ecuador, Kenya, Senegal and Zambia, examining how IMF programs reinforce fiscal consolidation, subsidy reforms and debt repayment obligations under the language of “green transition” and “climate resilience,” while deepening social inequality and climate vulnerability.
2026-05
Interview: This economic system is killing the planet and the people
Sri Lanka is still facing a severe debt and economic crisis that openly erupted in 2022 and continues to this day. Its root causes go far back into colonial history, as well as into the structural reforms the country has been required to implement since political independence under 17 IMF programs. The current measures under the ongoing IMF program are again leading to significant economic and social hardship. In addition, the country is facing the consequences of severe climate-related disasters, including the destruction caused by Cyclone Ditwah in late 2025, as well as the economic impacts of the war in the Middle East.
2026-05
IMF lending programs linked with deforestation should be rethought
The price of financial stability should not be environmental destruction. Yet when countries turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help, their forests may quietly suffer.
The IMF is currently reviewing the design of its lending programs, and it is time for change. Its recipe for getting economies back on track often features required reforms such as cutting government expenditure, increasing revenue collection through taxes or utility tariff increases, winding down public ownership of state-owned enterprises and encouraging the private sector to step up: austerity in other words.
2026-05
Feminist Economic Justice in a Time of Fracturing Multilateralism A reflection on war, debt, care, and what it would take to (re)build a system that puts people’s rights and the planet before profit
2026-04
The IMF and the elephant in the energy sector
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is not wrong to say that Pakistan’s power sector subsidy regime needs reform. Any serious policy practitioner knows that the present tariff structure is fiscally expensive, administratively weak, and vulnerable to misuse. But the IMF is wrong in how it has framed the problem, sequenced the solution, and identified the culprit.
2026-04
Financing a Just Socio-Ecological Transition: More Isn’t Always Better
At the IMF Spring Meetings 2026, much of the discussion circled around familiar themes: a worsening global debt crisis, growing external imbalances, and the surge in defense spending reshaping fiscal priorities. But framed through a justice lens, these are not isolated issues—they are deeply interconnected symptoms of a financial system that continues to extract from the Global South while limiting its development options.
2026-04
Bretton Woods Observer Spring 2026
2026-04
Debt and Democracy
What happens to democracy, when debt repayments dictate government spending? How is sovereignty affected when policy choices prioritise creditors over citizens’ human rights? What does it mean for the environment and people’s rights when creditor institutions dictate policies? Explore these linkages in the following videos.
2026-04
Escaping the IMF Austerity Trap
There is ample research showing that growth-oriented strategies accompanied by redistribution policies are the most promising path to recovery across the Global South. Rather than imposing cookie-cutter austerity programs, the International Monetary Fund should be following the evidence.
2026-04
From Springs to Santa Marta: Shifting Dynamics in Global Finance, Debt, and Energy Transitions
The Santa Marta conference should not elevate the IFIs without recognising their structural and political limitations and without a commitment from shareholder governments to reform their governance, policy and practice. At the heart must be a paradigm shift that puts finance and macroeconomics at the service of a just transition, human rights, and the planet — not the other way around.
2026-04
Why a UN Debt Convention is Critical for Climate Justice
Across Global South countries, debt payments to external creditors have reached their highest levels in 30 years, with around 130 countries in or near debt distress. Many are pushed into austerity through IMF and World Bank programmes, which…restrict the policy space to
address the climate crisis. To generate the revenue needed to meet debt payments, many countries are expanding their reliance on fossil fuels, critical materials, and industrial agriculture, often pushed by the IMF and World Bank. This creates a vicious cycle in which debt pressures directly contribute to accelerating the climate crisis.
2026-04
Briefing for the Santa Marta TAFF conference: Reform international financial institutions for a just transition
This briefing provides policymakers, journalists and civil society engaged in negotiations around the Santa Marta TAFF conference a short, accessible background on why IFIs like the IMF can enable or undermine a just transition and how policymakers can advance concrete reforms within IFIs to put the conference ambition into practice.
2026-04
Argentina and the IMF in 2026: A Highly Unstable Stabilization
After eight years of programs with the IMF (2018–2026), “the country has failed to stabilize its economy or regain access to capital markets.” The 2025 agreement, signed without the planned safeguards and debates, cements Argentina’s position as the IMF’s largest debtor. The result is a program that seeks to stabilize without transforming: it cuts social spending, weakens state capacity, and deepens dependence on sectors that exacerbate the environmental crisis. Far from correcting structural imbalances, the plan appears to reinforce them
2026-04
Broken debt system must be fixed to confront future climate shocks
New UN-supported forum should challenge a global system that leaves many Global South nations with zero fiscal breathing space to navigate climate disasters and economic crises.
2026-04
The Cost of Debt in a Time of Overlapping Crises
As financing conditions tighten, governments are diverting scarce resources toward external debt service and away from health, education, infrastructure, and climate resilience. At the same time, climate shocks and development needs are increasing financing requirements, deepening reliance on costly borrowing. For many LMICs, the problem is no longer simply one of temporary liquidity but of debt burdens that are increasingly difficult to sustain under current global conditions.
2026-04
How IMF-WB policies have exposed us to oil price shocks
Decades of neoliberal policies pushed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have eroded measures in developing nations meant to safeguard domestic economies from external shocks. The IMF and World Bank introduced rapid deregulation and the unrestricted flow of foreign capital that allowed large foreign companies to dominate in strategic industries including oil and gas production.
2026-03
Civil society reissues call for stronger IMF engagement
In a joint letter to the International Monetary Fund’s Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and Executive Directors, a coalition of 125 civil society organisations reiterates a call to improve engagement and consultation processes with CSOs at the next review of the IMF Guidelines on Engagement with Civil Society.
2026-03
Time to pivot: Financing for development in a new era
This publication makes the case that the deliberations and decisions following the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development must take forward the drive to reform the international financial architecture to make it more resilient, inclusive, and effective in addressing global challenges. The analyses presented here argue that, in light of the climate change challenge, what is required is a radical change in thinking and action on financing for development.
2026-01
Gender, debt and fossil fuels: A mapping of key insights from the African continent
This report explores and summarises key learnings on the relationships between debt, fossil fuels and gender justice in Africa; and subsequent policy demands, many of which have emerged from feminist leaders and collectives. Wherever possible, it relies on African literature and expertise.
The state of play of IMF conditionality
2026-01
Behind the Words: How IMF and World Bank Discourse Sustains Neoliberal Agendas and Shapes Advocacy in the Arab Region
The findings of this report reveal a clear pattern: the IMF and World Bank employ language as an instrument of power. By substituting politically charged terms such as “austerity” with technocratic ones like “fiscal consolidation”, they construct an image of neutrality that legitimizes harmful policies while concealing their social consequences. When confronted with criticism, they deploy narrative reversal tactics, discrediting evidence, shifting responsibility, and reframing failures as the fault of domestic actors.
2026-01
People of Sri Lanka demand renegotiation of the IMF deal, debt, and climate justice in the face of the national disaster
Cyclone Ditwah has inflicted devastating impacts across Sri Lanka. Recovery demands urgent revision of the debt restructuring agreement, massive debt reduction, and an immediate standstill on current and future debt servicing for Sri Lanka’s recovery. IMF conditions perpetuate a debt-climate trap, hindering building resilience and eroding social protections amid 6.3 million facing food insecurity.
2026-01
This Decade’s Best Chance to Get Debt Sustainability Right
For the first time in nearly 10 years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have a chance to revise a key framework that will shape whether low-income countries are set up for a decade of growth or a decade of lost opportunity. The IMF and World Bank’s review of their Debt Sustainability Framework for Low-Income Countries (LIC DSF) is nearing its final stages, with profound implications for economic growth, financial stability and climate action in developing countries. Given its critical role in helping countries manage debt responsibly, the review of the framework has drawn input from a diverse range of bodies including the G20; the United Nations (UN) Financing for Development Conference; the Vatican’s Jubilee Commission; the Expert Review on Debt, Nature and Climate; and the UN Secretary General’s Expert Group on Debt
2025-12
The IMF & World Bank’s Grip on MENA
Over the last 15 years, the IMF and World Bank lending programs have attached more than 1,365 policy conditions to the MENA region, transforming everything from fiscal policy to social protection systems. This level of conditionality does not represent technical expertise, but a powerful ideological project that prioritises austerity, privatization, deregulation, and political containment. The paper reveals how these conditionalities—whether framed as budget reforms, climate measures, or governance improvements—carry profound social consequences. They consistently shift the burden of global crises onto the region’s most vulnerable groups, including people living in poverty, informal workers, and especially women.
2025-12
Bretton Woods Observer: Winter 2025
The Winter 2025 issue of Bretton Woods Observer is out, providing a critical look at pressing global finance and development challenges. It examines why, as the Jubilee year concludes, systemic inequities continue to shape global debt governance, and explores the International Finance Corporation’s first securitisation transaction—an initiative to mobilise private capital into emerging markets that raises questions about development impact and accountability. The edition also highlightscivil society’s call for a just transition at COP30 amid ongoing concerns about multilateral development banks’ climate finance commitments and the growing role of private finance.
2025-11
MENAFem’s Complete COP30 Assessment: BAM, Finance, and the Road Ahead
COP30 closed with a sharp contrast between political ambition and the refusal of states to meet their obligations. What we saw during are negotiations that moved fast on language, slow on accountability, and silent on finance. The result is a COP that delivers one historic mechanism for justice, but many weak outcomes that leave vulnerable communities exposed. And so, the gap between rights and resources remains wide.
2025-11
How did COP30 stack up against demands for debt and climate justice?
Want to know how COP30 stacked up against the Debt and Climate WG’s demands for debt and climate justice? We’ve got you covered! Our latest blog breaks down the failure to deliver on public climate finance and debt justice, and the opportunities ahead as we continue the fight.
2025-11
COP 30 must tackle the debt trap and shortfall in public finance to deliver a Just Transition
Climate action, including policies and measures to support a just transition, requires countries to have the necessary fiscal and policy space to design and implement their own climate policies. However, most developing countries lack this due to structural issues, such as the fact that many are constrained by increasing levels of public debt. This growing debt crisis is fueling a vicious circle where countries are forced to prioritise debt servicing over critical public expenditures, such as health, education and climate action.
2025-11
Debt and climate justice: Strategic engagement in UNFCCC processes at COP30 and beyond
This briefing outlines how to strategically engage in COP30 processes to secure long-term wins on debt and climate justice. It includes key messages and recommendations for relevant UNFCCC processes and serves as an advocacy tool for insider and outsider work at COP30.
2025-11
Debt & climate working group false solutions briefings
The debt and climate crises are deeply connected – but false ‘solutions’ risk distracting from, delaying, and ultimately avoiding the deep changes needed to resolve them. This mini-series will give you the evidence, talking points, and tools to push back and promote genuine, lasting solutions to the debt and climate crises.
2025-10
IMF and Argentina: new agreement, same problems
This report analyses three central dimensions of Argentina’s crisis: the profound productive crisis the country is undergoing; the structural limits and contradictions posed by the use of the “fiscal anchor” as the cornerstone of the agreement; and the legal irregularities surrounding the agreement including non-compliance with the IMF’s own exceptional access policy conditions and a lack of transparency in its negotiation and approval.
2025-10
A feminist approach to macroeconomics
This new website – including papers on ecological justice, debt, tax, financialisation and more – strengthens the Global South feminist analysis of current and emerging macroeconomic dynamics, their main issues and the challenges they impose. The project’s conceptual framework challenges orthodox approaches to macroeconomics by expanding the dialogue with alternative heterodox views, referencing different methodologies and going beyond traditional economic models and indicators like Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
2025-10
All roads lead to reform: A financial system fit to mobilize $1.3 trillion for climate finance
In light of the underwhelming provision and mobilization of climate finance for developing countries, this report identifies several priorities for systemic reform that can help scale climate finance flows and create a more enabling international financial architecture (IFA) for climate-resilient development.
2025-10
Green rhetoric, grey reality: IMF surveillance and climate action 2022–2025
This new report assesses how the IMF integrated climate change into its core surveillance activities (country-level economic evaluations known as Article IV consultations) between 2022 and mid-2025. It reveals concerningly slow progress, despite broad coverage of national climate action plans and incipient coverage of climate in econometric models. The IMF continues to advise fiscal consolidation without assessing the impacts of such policies on climate investments, in almost two thirds of the 60 countries assessed. The report flags the risk of the IMF’s climate advice creating a two-track system that boosts wealthy countries but prevents developing countries from pursuing green pathways in the long-term.
2025-10
Annual Meetings 2025 Wrap-up
IMF and World Bank declare uncertainty the “new normal” amid spectacle showcasing US and private capital interests. Reflections from the Bretton Woods Project.
2025-10
Reflections on the IMF/World Bank meetings (2025): Debt, surveillance, and the mirage of inclusive growth
The 2025 International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank annual meetings in October again attempted to strike a balance between discussions of reform and the organizations’ traditional policies. Officials spoke about “green transitions” and “gender-responsive macro-policy”. However, behind this progressive language, the primary focus remained on tight budgets, debt repayment, and private-sector growth. These have been the primary ideas guiding the Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs) since 1944.
2025-10
Feminist Reflections on the 2025 IMF–World Bank Annual Meetings: Resisting Austerity, Reclaiming Justice
Eighty years after the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions, what we see is that the status quo must not pass: an international financial architecture that remains reluctant to change, because any real transformation would necessarily require a reordering of power and resources. Instead, this architecture continues to deepen inequalities, privatize essential services, and shift the costs of austerity onto women and marginalized communities.
2025-10
Putting Development First: Climate Change and the International Financial Architecture
The Task Force’s new strategy report doubles down and expands its mandate to include both the global financial safety net and development finance institutions combined, and moving forward the Task Force will be called the Task Force on Climate, Development and the International Financial Architecture.
2025-09
Africa’s Vicious Cycle of Debt and Climate Change
African nations are trapped in a vicious circle: They are among the most climate-vulnerable yet least able to afford the investments needed for resilience. Climate vulnerability has been shown to drive up the cost of sovereign debt, creating a climate risk premium that leaves governments with even less fiscal space to invest in adaptation and resilience.
This brief highlights how this cycle threatens fiscal stability, questions the adequacy of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) debt sustainability analysis (DSA) , and points to ways forward.
2025-07
Bretton Woods Project: Summer Observer 2025
In this edition the cover piece analyses the 2025 JubileeYear in light of FfD4 and longstanding calls from Global South countries and CSOs to reform the debt architecture.
2025-07
Launch Webinar: An Advocacy Guide to the IMF and Climate Justice
We launched this website with a jam-packed webinar presenting an introduction to the IMF and climate as well as case studies from Argentina, Egypt and Pakistan.
2025-06
“Making financial flows consistent with climate-resilient development”: The role of international financial institutions and standard setters
Recourse’s new briefing explores the role of international financial institutions, global economic decision-making fora, financial standard setters, and multilateral finance providers in setting the conditions for aligning finance with Article 2.1c in a way that is grounded in justice and equity, both key principles of the Paris Agreement.
It covers the UNFCCC, the G20, Financing for Development, the IMF, central banks and financial regulators, and the World Bank.
2025-04
Bretton Woods Project: Observer Spring 2025
n this edition, the cover piece talks about civil society calls to revive the ‘spirit of Monterrey’ at FfD4 and reassert the UN’s role in global economic governance. The Spring edition also includes two guest pieces: a comment by Sue Godt, a Development Researcher, about the consequences of IFC’s financing of health model following an expose by Bloomberg, and a analysis by Faith Numonya, of Akina Mama wa Afrika, on the African aid trap in the context of reductions of ODA worldwide.
2024-10
The IMF is still advising damaging austerity and continued fossil fuel production, in spite of promises of IMF climate action, data shows
New analysis of the loan conditions for the 51 countries currently under an IMF program reveals that the Fund is promoting the same public budget cuts under the cover of climate arguments, essentially greenwashing austerity.
2024-10
Una mirada regional a la deuda, la crisis climática y el extractivismo en países Amazónicos
La Red Latinoamericana por Justicia Económica y Social (LATINDADD) implementó un proyecto regional para visibilizar la relación entre la deuda, la crisis climática y el exrtactivismo que afectan especialmente a cinco países de la Amazonía (Perú, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador y Surinam), con el propósito de plantear soluciones que contribuyan a un futuro sostenible para todas las personas. En ese sentido, ese documento presenta los hallazgos más destacados de los 5 reporte país.
2024-10
IMF 2030: A Transformative Action Agenda for Achieving Climate and Development Goals
A new report from the Task Force on Climate, Development and the IMF pushes for a faster and deeper evolution of the IMF that is both development-centered in its approach to climate and embraces an investment push as a priority goal. It presents three core policy recommendations animated by an IMF 2030 Action Agenda, comprised of concrete reforms to be implemented over the next 12 months.
2024-10