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V20 Ministerial Dialogue IX Chair Opening delivered by H.E. Ken Ofori-Atta, Hon. Finance Minister of Republic of Ghana

Chair Opening delivered by H.E.  Ken Ofori-Atta, Hon. Finance Minister of Republic of Ghana

V20 MINISTERIAL DIALOGUE IX

16 October 2022

H.E.  Ken Ofori-Atta, Hon. Finance Minister of Republic of Ghana

Good morning. And Kristalina, thank you for joining us for this very important dialogue, our Ministerial Dialogue, the ninth.  So, to esteemed Finance Ministers of the V20, Excellencies, Honorable Ministers, and Reps from the G7 and G20 countries, Heads of International Financial Institutions, Multilateral Development Partners, Banks and Partners, Ladies and Gentlemen, as the new Chair of the V20, it is my pleasure to welcome you all to the ninth V20 Ministerial Dialogue and the first under the Ghana presidency.  

We thank the Bank Presidency, and we will continue to upscale our efforts.  We now represent a cohort of 58 economies and 1.5 billion people highly vulnerable to the horrific effects of climate change.  As economic managers, it has long been clear to us that climate change is not a distant challenge.  It has set ablaze not only many of the world’s forests but also our fragile national budgets.  

Climate change is simply compounding existing and increasingly acute fiscal stress.  The international financial architecture must become fit for climate and for our development ambitions and it must translate into accelerated transformational changes in the real economy towards our common prosperity.  We represent some 30 percent of the world’s population, however about 3 percent of global wealth.  This same sense of purpose is behind our work to advance our partners in the G7, the global shield for everyone.  It is what animates our work to reform the IMS Article IV instrument.  

We began our campaign on this four years ago and this June new rules finally issued showed our work has borne fruit as the IMF has now explicitly integrated fiscal climate risk and transition risk into its mandate.  It is still not enough to protect our communities and economies, of course, but is nonetheless a mighty advance towards what we hope will trigger global cascade that revalues assets that threaten our 1.5 centigrade survival limit, and which can strongly encourage resilient investments to flow far earlier at scale.  

Colleagues, the pain we feel is already sharp and suffering is already widespread, yet we know that we are only at the cusp of the climate crisis.  The latest report by climate scientists in the IPCC indicates that some climate impacts like extreme heat spells are set to double in scale by 2030.  Weighed together, the impacts already are wreaking havoc on our economies today and the eminent impacts we know are coming our way present a truly troubling scenario.  

It is for this reason that we must consider this decade as critical to building resilience within our development plans and within the investments we drive into our economies, especially since our capacity to deliver a fair contribution to global decarbonization is anchored on our ability to rapidly increase adaptation and build socio-economic resilience.  

I’m pleased to play a video of Ms. Dramani, the CVF Ambassador for Youth, to remind us of the connection between climate resilience and heritage.  And the fact that the younger generation has a lot more to lose if the leaders of today get this wrong, while solidarity in our approach towards climate action will guarantee a future of shared prosperity and intergenerational equity.  But this is a risk as we know since the COVID pandemic the capacity for 10-year-olds to read and write has moved from 50 percent to 70 percent.  So, our future is at risk indeed. The video?  

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