IMF 2030: A Transformative Action Agenda for Achieving Climate and Development Goals

With just six years until 2030, there is an urgent need to unlock investments and mobilize affordable climate finance in a fiscally sound and financially stable manner.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has a vital role to play, and proposals to reform the international financial architecture – whether the Bridgetown Initiative, the Paris Pact for People and Planet or the Nairobi Declaration – all involve reforms to the IMF.

Yet, despite notable recent strides, ambition to integrate climate at the Fund remains limited. A transformation of the IMF is necessary for aligning the international financial architecture with shared development and climate change 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.

The report calls on IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva to lead this effort and for the Fund to report on the status of progress at the 2025 IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings.

IMF 2030 Action Agenda

The IMF’s vision and approach to climate change should reflect a sense of urgency given the intensifying nature of the climate crisis and the essential need for rapid action. The IMF should upgrade its tools to enable the investment push required and support a stepwise increase in financing to address climate change in a fiscally sound and financially stable manner.

Across the three key areas of reforming its surveillance functions, aligning its lending toolkit and enhancing its leadership role, the Action Agenda presents 22 reforms, including:

• Committing its financing in support of the Paris Agreement, responses to climate shocks and resilience-building, and investments in growth-enhancing measures.
• Shifting away from fiscal consolidation towards resource mobilization.
• Refining debt sustainability analyses (DSAs) to spur economic growth and identify pathways to increase investment while maintaining fiscal sustainability.
• Expanding access and resources for the Resilience and Sustainability Facility.
• Reforming its lending rate and surcharge policy.
• Increasing the scope and efficiency of re-channeling Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).
• Integrating climate resilient debt clauses and replenishing the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust.

The narrow window to limit warming to 1.5C, the need for developing countries to pursue structural transformations in a climate-constrained world, the increasingly apparent costs of a disorderly transition and the lost opportunities of remaining tied to a fossil fuel intensive economy require the IMF to pursue its evolution with urgency. If the global economy is to transform, so too must the IMF.