The View from the Spring Meetings: From Rhetoric to Action

Welcome back to Reshaping Multilateralism, a newsletter from the team at the Nexus25 project. Every month, we bring you the latest from the climate-security-migration nexus, with a particular focus on how to make multilateralism work for everyone - not just the Global North.?

Last month, the Nexus25 team traveled to Washington, DC for the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings, an annual gathering of the who’s who in international development. Amidst the motorcades and fancy evening receptions, this 80th anniversary for these so-called Bretton Woods Institutions represented a critical juncture for international climate finance in the runup to this year’s G7, UNGA and COP. Like recent multilateral events, attendees were well aware that their ambitions were limited by a contentious geopolitical environment. Discussions were dominated by the conflict in Gaza, the lack of progress toward the NDCs, the need for private sector investment and the potential impact of upcoming elections in nearly every part of the world. While there were some glimmers of hope, with developed countries pledging $11 billion to the Bank and critical conversations on this year’s replenishment of the International Development Association (IDA), calls for new funds and debt relief for the most vulnerable were largely cast aside.

On the sidelines of these high-level discussions, the Nexus25 team hosted a roundtable in partnership with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to assess progress on investing in fragile settings - particularly in the frame of long-term food security. Going into the discussion, the team laid the foundation that adequate, fit-for-purpose climate finance is the key to successful mitigation, adaptation, and resilience – placing the World Bank, IMF, and other IFIs at the center of the green transition and other sustainable security efforts. Ultimately, the discussion between World Bank stakeholders, U.S. policymakers, and academics emphasized that policymakers and development practitioners alike are well aware of the challenges that lie ahead and must begin working toward creative climate finance solutions. Some key areas of opportunity include:?

• More ambitiously leveraging best practices or case studies such as:?

• Reforming the international financial architecture to relieve the burden on FCV states; and?
• Mobilizing the private sector by developing strategies for managing risk.

These events once again underscored that it is critical to move beyond the barriers to change and instead develop methods to break these barriers down, particularly in FCV settings - and focus more on high-impact issues like water security and agri-food systems transformation. This month’s upcoming Nexus25 products hope to contribute to those policy discussions, including:?

• A new issue brief from Nexus25 contributor Thin Lei Win on a critical nexus issue: water security. Despite an impending water crisis due to climate risks and mismanagement, water security takes a backseat in policy debates around food, climate change, and security. Ultimately, Thin will make the case for governments to move beyond short-term economic wins and address challenges like global hunger via a transformation of how we manage global water supplies.?
• An upcoming podcast episode on nexus dynamics in South Asia, opportunities for policy leadership, needed reforms to unlock climate finance, geopolitics and more. Reshaping Multilateralism host Thin Lei Win and guests Ameera Adil, the Senior Manager for Sustainability at one of Pakistan’s largest universities and Debbie Aung Din Taylor, co-founder of the award-winning social enterprise Proximity Designs which provides affordable products to Myanmar’s small scale farmers, will take readers and listeners to the front lines of climate change where food, water security, climate change and migration intersect.?

As we look towards June - featuring a series of G7 meetings and the European Parliament elections, we’ll be reading:

• European Environment Agency: “Europe is not prepared for rapidly growing climate risks”
• Vox: “How rioting farmers unraveled Europe’s ambitious climate plan”?
• FT: “EU hits roadblocks in reaching green milestone as elections loom”
• La Stampa: “Energy and climate are at the center of the Italian G7 presidency. Relations with Africa will therefore be decisive for global balances.”?

Nexus25 is a joint initiative from global experts at Istituto Affari Internazionali and the Center for Climate and Security funded by Stiftung Mercator. For more from the Nexus25 team, go to www.nexus25.org for our full body of research or click the “subscribe” button in the upper right corner of the page.