Today, Latin American countries are faced with the option of returning to international and regional financial institutions - IMF, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) - or rejecting the failed recipes of the 1990s in order to build and reinforce alternatives that allow them to face the current crisis.
In the midst of intensifying global discussions on climate change due to culminate in Copenhagen in December, the US congress voted not to fund the World Bank's Clean Technology Fund (CTF) for 2009.
The financial crisis has reinvigorated discussion of exchange rate management and reform of the monetary system, but lack of progress at international forums like the IMF means change is only happening at the regional and bilateral level.
The first major conference on the financial and economic crisis to involve all countries ended with rich countries blocking substantive reforms demanded by developing countries. The UN conference did however push key issues up the international agenda, such as the need for a better system of international reserves, and for genuine policy space for developing countries.
Civil society groups, painfully aware of information access problems at the World Bank and IMF, hope this year's reviews of transparency and disclosure will bring radical improvement.
Notes of a meeting between the IMF and civil society organisations
This page will be updated regularly with the latest news from the 2009 World Bank and IMF spring meetings
A civil society event organised by World Resources Institute (WRI) at the World Bank spring meetings 2009
There are two major problems which interacted together to cause the crisis: the failure of the financial regulatory and supervisory systems and the failure of the international monetary system. These problems are outlined in written evidence submitted to trhe UK Treasury Committee.
In a submission the the DFID white paper consultation, we set out the significant change needed at the World Bank and IMF to bring them into line both with international norms and with UK policy, in order to improve their contribution to sustainable development. In this submission we outline changes needed in: IFI governance; IFI conditionality policies; IFI policies related to aid effectiveness; IFI policy on climate change; private-sector finance; and the financial sector's impact on devel
In this paper we assess the outcomes of the London Summit and the UK government's progress towards the 12 recommendations set out by the Put People First platform in March 2009. The G20 London Summit on 2 April 2009 issued "a global plan for recovery and reform". G20 leaders have not yet gone far enough on the fundamental changes the world needs. The communique appears to have made progress on some critical issues but there were also missed opportunities, especially on building a green economy,
A number of 'pilot' funds are underway to develop climate related interventions in key sectors. Significant UK financing has been dedicated to these funds, primarily through the World Bank. These pilot programmes must be seen as building blocks towards an appropriate post 2012 financial architecture. Based on an emerging UK civil society consensus this paper highlights the form that this architecture should take, what development models it should build upon and what technological approaches it s
At the 80th anniversary of the World Bank and IMF, global civil society must maintain pressure on the Brazilian and South African G20 presidencies to ensure the forth Financing for Development Conference in 2025 results in urgently required international financial architecture reform.
Multilateral development banks can reduce their dependence on hard currency lending and make local currency financing a central element of their developmental mandate.
