Oxfam’s Reaction to the New Global Financing Pact Summit

An Oxfam spokesperson said: “We are deeply disappointed that this Summit has failed to provide a response commensurate with the colossal needs of the global south to cope with climate change and provide their populations with essential services such as healthcare.

“While the wealth of the super-rich booms, the lives and livelihoods of the world’s most vulnerable people are battered by crisis after crisis. This Summit needed to deliver trillions of dollars of new debt-free money for low-and middle-income countries. What they got was a rehash of old broken promises and the prospect of more loans that will push the lowest income nations further towards debt disaster. This Summit has done nothing for the two billion people – representing one quarter of humanity – who live in countries that cannot afford to take on more debt.

“The Prime Minister’s notable absence from the talks and the government’s backtracking on existing climate commitments with the licensing of new oil and gas developments in the UK, only serves to diminish the UK’s credibility on the global stage. If the UK wants to be seen as a global leader, it needs to lead and urgently step up to deliver on its promises made to tackle the climate crisis and protect the people it hits hardest.”

-ENDS-

For media enquiries please contact Zara Sarvarian, Press Officer Oxfam GB, at zsarvarian1@oxfam.org.uk, 07584 265077

Notes to editors:

• Oxfam's analysis (April 2023) of the $27,000 billion (around $3,900 billion a year until 2030) needed by low- and middle-income countries to cope with climate-related loss and damage, adaptation and mitigation measures, as well as their health, education and social protection needs.
• "Two billion people live in countries that cannot afford to take on more debt": Two billion is the sum of the population of 40 low-income countries that the IMF and World Bank rate either "in debt distress" or "at high risk of debt distress" (which makes them ineligible to get loans from the World Bank and receive grants instead), plus half of the population of 22 low-income countries rated "at moderate risk of debt distress" (which receive half their World Bank support in the form of grants and half as concessional loans), plus the population of 23 middle-income countries of which the sovereign bonds are currently traded at a yield of over 10%, plus the population of eight low or middle-income countries that are shut off international financial markets such that they have neither ratings from the WB/IMF, nor internationally-traded bonds.
• Calculations of mortality figures for Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan are based on the IPC reports on acute food insecurity published on https://www.ipcinfo.org/, using the crude mortality rates associated with IPC phase 3 in version 3.1 of the IPC technical manual. We subtract 0.22 deaths per 10,000 people affected per day to account for the "normal mortality rate", based on World Bank data.
• Oxfam has calculated that a net wealth tax of up to 5% on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could generate $1.7 trillion annually. See the Survival of the Richest methodology note here