常务副秘书长呼吁改革全球金融架构以实现可持续发展目标
联合国 2023年4月13日
https://news.un.org/zh/story/2023/04/1117057
联合国常务副秘书长阿明娜·穆罕默德（Amina Mohammed）今天在华盛顿表示，在多重全球危机中，可持续发展目标正变得越来越遥远，突出表明需要改革全球金融架构。
在国际货币基金组织和世界银行春季会议期间举行的改革论坛上，穆罕默德呼吁在实现《2030年可持续发展议程》中期阶段之际，修正路线以创造一个新的布雷顿森林体系“时刻”。
重重危机
过去几年来，接连不断的全球危机使发展中国家受到重创。高昂的能源和食品价格加剧了世界上一些最贫穷国家面临的挑战，许多国家仍然深陷新冠疫情的泥沼。
人类发展指数32年来首次连续两年下降，低至2016年的水平。
贫困和饥饿正在加剧，不平等现象也在扩大。
同时，气候紧急情况继续打击脆弱经济体和脆弱人口。瓦努阿图是全球最易受气候影响的国家。上个月，该国遭受两重热带气旋侵袭，导致国内生产总值损失一半，以及儿童罹患水媒疾病传播增加。
此外，全球金融状况迅速收紧，借贷成本上升，增加了脆弱国家的债务困扰风险，并削弱了其投资于复苏的能力，更无法投资于气候行动和长期可持续发展。
全球金融架构存在缺陷
穆罕默德指出：“这些广泛的挑战表明全球金融架构存在缺陷，这一架构是为一个不复存在的世界设计的，过于短视、容易发生危机并且极度不平等。”
全球一半的极端贫困人口分布在52个发展中国家。这些国家正遭受着严重的债务问题，其中25个将20%或以上的公共收入用于偿还其外部公共债务。
在去年分配的6500亿美元特别提款权中，发达国家获得了约4200亿美元（66%）；非洲仅获得340亿美元（5.2%）；而最不发达国家则获得了不到170亿美元（2.5%）。
改革势在必行
穆罕默德表示，要改善全球金融架构，需要改革，创造新的布雷顿森林体系。
因此，布里奇敦倡议引发了共鸣。该倡议呼吁采取行动解决债务和流动性问题，并大幅扩大官方贷款，例如扩大针对目前无法获得救济的脆弱中等收入国家的贷款。
联合国秘书长古特雷斯同样对改革表示支持，他呼吁启动每年至少5000亿美元的全球可持续发展目标刺激计划，从而扩大为有需要的国家提供负担得起的长期融资。
可持续发展目标刺激计划提出了扭转局面所需要立即采取的行动。其中包括大规模动员官方融资、解决债务积压问题、降低借贷成本、重新分配未使用的特别提款权，以及在危机时期提供应急融资。
五个相互关联领域的挑战
古特雷斯指出，要支撑新的布雷顿森林体系，需要以有意义的全球治理改革为基础。
实现这些改革需要自我审视现有机构，并改进国际金融机构、联合国和其他利益攸关方之间的合作。
穆罕默德强调，全球经济治理改革的关键在于解决国际金融架构中五个相互关联领域的挑战：改革全球经济治理；缩小主权债务架构中的差距；重塑国际公共财政，包括大规模扩大可持续发展投资的可负担的长期筹资；加强全球金融安全网；以及重新设定银行和金融系统的规则。
At the halfway mark of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are slipping from our grasp.
The succession of global crises over the past few years has battered developing countries. High energy and food prices have compounded challenges for some of the world’s poorest countries, with many still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the first time in 32 years, the Human Development Index has declined for two years in a row, reaching its 2016 levels. Poverty and hunger are on the rise, while inequalities have widened. These crises come on top of a climate emergency that continues to batter vulnerable economies and populations, making our asks of them to lift themselves out of destitution not only unrealistic – but delusional.
This is evidenced by last month’s twin cyclones on Vanuatu – the world’s most climate-vulnerable country – which has cost an estimated half of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), while leading to an increase of water-borne diseases among children. Across the world, we are asking too much, and offering too little.
These crises also come amid rapidly tightening global financial conditions and rising borrowing costs, which have increased the risk of debt distress in vulnerable countries and undermined their ability to invest in recovery – let alone climate action and long-term sustainable development.
Fifty-two developing countries, home to half of the world’s extreme poor, are suffering from severe debt problems. Twenty-five of them spend 20 per cent or more of their public revenue just to service their external public debt. These widespread challenges are indicative of a flawed global financial architecture — one that was designed for a world that no longer exists and is too short-sighted, crisis-prone and deeply unequal.
We need a course correction now to create a new Bretton Woods moment. This is why the Bridgetown Initiative has struck such a chord with its calls for action on debt and liquidity, and dramatically expanding official lending, including for vulnerable middle-income countries currently locked out of accessing relief.
The Secretary-General has lent his voice to calls for reform, in his proposal for a global SDG Stimulus of at least $500 billion a year to scale up affordable long-term financing for countries in need. The SDG Stimulus sets out the immediate actions required to turn things around. These include mobilizing official financing at scale, addressing debt overhangs and lowering the cost of borrowing, reallocating unused Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) and providing contingency financing in times of crisis.
These actions can be taken immediately, without any changes to the current architecture and using existing methodologies and instruments. There is no reason not to act. And yet, the international community is not finding common ground. The Group of Twenty (G20) in particular remains at an impasse. But failing to listen to these clear cries for change would be a mistake, one that would lead to the decoupling of our global financial system — and an unravelling of multilateralism at large.
The Bridgetown Initiative, the forthcoming Summit on a new “Global Financing Pact” organized by President Macron in June in France, and the United Nations SDG Summit and High-Level Dialogue on Financing in September are all opportunities to build a coalition of like-minded leaders to drive an ambitious financing package for the SDGs and climate action.
All the recommendations in the SDG Stimulus are achievable – they just require political will. Actions taken now, as proposed in the SDG Stimulus, would go a long way towards addressing the urgent challenges of the moment. But they need to go hand in hand with an effort to reform and address deep and long-standing flaws in the international financial architecture.
The Secretary-General recently spoke of the need for a Bretton Woods 2.0 system, underpinned by a meaningful reform of global governance. Realizing these reforms will require looking inwards at our institutions, as well as revamping the engagement between international financial institutions, the United Nations and other stakeholders.
Global economic governance reform should be at the core of our engagement on the Summit of the Future in 2024. Reforms should address challenges in five interrelated areas of the international financial architecture.
First, global economic governance must be reformed. With developing countries playing an ever more important role in the global economy, there is a need to broaden and strengthen their representation in the governance of international institutions. Capital increases at international financial institutions are an opportunity to increase the voting shares of developing countries.
Second, closing gaps in the sovereign debt architecture. The current international system does not have the tools to drive the deep and rapid debt restructurings required. Nor is it equipped to address a systemic debt crisis. And we must not continue to fool ourselves into thinking that the Common Framework alone is sufficient to address today’s needs.
There is an urgent need to create an improved multilateral debt relief initiative, which includes mechanisms to involve private creditors in official debt relief efforts and ensure fair treatment of all creditors, while offering sufficient relief to avoid repeat crises. For many vulnerable countries, such as small island developing States, integrating disaster clauses into lending can provide immediate relief following a climate-related shock.
Third, there is a need to reshape international public finance, including by massively scaling up affordable and long-term financing for investments in sustainable development. Public development banks are uniquely positioned to play a key role in accelerating such investments. The terms of lending of multilateral development banks can be improved with longer-term loans, lower interest rates, local currency lending, and state-contingent repayment clauses. Multilateral development banks must also explicitly incorporate the SDGs into all stages of the lending process.
To boost their lending capacity, the multilateral development banks need to use existing capital more efficiently, building on the G20’s work on capital adequacy reform. But even that won’t be sufficient. They will also need new capital infusions. Re-channelling SDRs through multilateral development banks can also support lending. The African Development Bank’s SDR recycling initiative is a welcome move in this direction.
We must also address another gap in the international public finance architecture. The system was not set up to finance global public goods, such as climate action, or to prepare for massive transitions in our economies — such as those brought about by the digital and green economies.
In this regard, we must find a lasting solution to financing global public goods, including climate action. One proposal is a resilience fund, which could be partially funded by SDRs. Climate action must also be embedded within a just transition framework. This means that social protection and decent job creation must go hand in hand with adaptation and mitigation efforts.
Fourth, the global financial safety net needs to be strengthened. Recent crises have highlighted the vulnerability of many developing countries to external shocks, constraining access to international liquidity when countries need it most. For the long term, the development of a mechanism for more automatic countercyclical state-contingent issuance of SDRs should be considered.
In the near term, SDRs must be urgently re-channelled to countries in need. Of the $650 billion in SDRs allocated last year, developed countries received about $420 billion, or 66 per cent; Africa received only 5.2 per cent, or $34 billion; while least developed countries received less than $17 billion, or just 2.5 per cent. The Sixteenth General Review of Quotas is an opportunity to recapitalize the International Monetary Fund (IMF), expand its lending capacity, and de-link capital contributions and resource allocations.
Finally, we must reset the rules of the banking and financial system. The recent banking failures in the United States and Switzerland have once again exposed gaps in financial regulatory and supervisory systems.
Regulators must ensure that financial regulation effectively reins in excessive leverage. More broadly, it is time to find solutions to reduce short-termism in markets and to better align private finance with sustainable development. This includes better impact reporting to reduce greenwashing, policies to better align incentives, and corporate governance reform.
Most of the reforms I’ve highlighted are already being discussed on multilateral platforms including the G20 and international financial institutions — as well as in nationally led processes, such as the Bridgetown Initiative and the Paris Summit, and at the United Nations.
The time has come to bring these disparate discussions together, and build the political will required to transform these ambitions into reality. The international community must act now to deliver on the promises of the 2030 Agenda while leaving no one behind. Let’s get it done. Let’s do it together.
