Climate-Sensitive Management of Public Finances—"Green PFM”


Book Description

Public financial management (PFM) consists of all the government’s institutional arrangements in place to facilitate the implementation of fiscal policies. In response to the growing urgency to fight climate change, “green PFM” aims at adapting existing PFM practices to support climate-sensitive policies. With the cross-cutting nature of climate change and wider environmental concerns, green PFM can be a key enabler of an integrated government strategy to combat climate change. This note outlines a framework for green PFM, emphasizing the need for an approach combining various entry points within, across, and beyond the budget cycle. This includes components such as fiscal transparency and external oversight, and coordination with state-owned enterprises and subnational governments. The note also identifies principles for effective implementation of a green PFM strategy, among which the need for a strong stewardship located within the ministry of finance is paramount.




How to Make the Management of Public Finances Climate-Sensitive–“Green PFM”


Book Description

This How to Note develops the “green public financial management (PFM)” framework briefly outlined in an earlier Staff Climate Note (2021/002, published in August 2021). It illustrates, how climate change and environmental concerns can be mainstreamed into government’s institutional arrangements in place to facilitate the implementation of fiscal policies. It provides numerous country examples covering possible entry points for green PFM – phases in the budget cycle (strategic planning and fiscal framework, budget preparation, budget execution and accounting, control, and audit), legal framework or issues that cut across the budget cycle, such as fiscal transparency or coordination with State Owned Enterprises or with subnational governments. This How to Note also summarizes practical guidance for implementation of a green PFM strategy, underscoring the need for a tailored approach adapted to country specificities and for a strong stewardship role of the Ministry of Finance.




Environmental Governance and Greening Fiscal Policy


Book Description

This book addresses the increasingly urgent question: How can governments be made more accountable for the quality of their environmental stewardship? It explores: Enhanced national State of the Environment reporting and integration of environmental outcomes in key national indicators. Mainstreaming environmental goals, targets, and risks by integrating them in fiscal policy and the annual budget—a government’s most important policy instrument. Promoting sustainability by progressively exposing and eliminating harmful tax and expenditure policies, putting a price on pollution, and providing environmental public goods. Civil society environmental monitoring. The book combines in-depth assessment of the latest climate/green budgeting literature and country practices with discussion of how to implement green fiscal policies. The framework is deliberately ambitious given the severity, scale, and urgency of climate change and biodiversity loss. The book will be of interest to ministry of finance, budget, and planning officials, to environment sector agencies, oversight institutions, international organizations, civil society organizations, and to academics and students in the fields of environmental studies, development studies, economics, public finance, and public policy.




Strengthening Infrastructure Governance for Climate-Responsive Public Investment


Book Description

Countries have committed, through the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to pursue climate targets and policies that would limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. A shift toward green public investment will help to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In addition, substantial public investment will be necessary to build public infrastructure that makes economies more resilient to climate change and related natural disasters. Climate change mitigation and adaptation challenges thus compound preexisting needs for public investment to foster the economic recovery from the pandemic and to meet the SDGs in a broader range of areas, often in a context of limited fiscal space. Against this backdrop, a priority for all countries is to manage their public investment efficiently and effectively. To help countries improve the institutions and processes for infrastructure governance (the planning, allocation, and implementation of public investment), the IMF developed in 2015 the Public Investment Management Assessment (PIMA), which has already been applied in over 70 countries. However, the current PIMA does not provide a sufficiently tailored assessment of how public investment management can support climate change mitigation and adaptation. To fill this gap, this paper introduces a new module to the to the current Public Investment Management Assessment (PIMA) framework, the “Climate-PIMA” (C-PIMA), whose goal is to help governments identify potential improvements in public investment institutions and processes to build low-carbon and climate-resilient infrastructure.




Green Fiscal Rules? Challenges and Policy Alternatives


Book Description

This paper studies the impact of green fiscal rules – designed to protect climate-related spending –on debt dynamics. Simulations of green rules that exempt green spending from the rule limits for an emergingmarket economy illustrate that they can lead to unsustainable debt dynamics when the net zero emissions goal is pursued mostly using spending-based instruments (e.g., investment and subsidies). Or the rule would need to implicitly assume a large fiscal adjustment in the non-green budget, which would undermine its credibility. It will be needed to build broad public consensus for a more comprehensive fiscal strategy that tackles the difficult policy tradeoffs that will be required and takes into account long-term effects. A more appropriate mix of climate policies, including actively employing carbon pricing, should be pursued within the overall setting of fiscal and debt objectives. Developing ‘green’ medium-term fiscal frameworks would help to integrate climate change considerations into fiscal policy design in a more comprehensive manner.




OECD Multi-level Governance Studies Aligning Regional and Local Budgets with Green Objectives Subnational Green Budgeting Practices and Guidelines


Book Description

Green budgeting is emerging at subnational levels as an important tool for regions and cities to use to align their expenditure and revenues with their green objectives, and enhance the transparency and accountability of their climate and environmental action. It is also a tool that subnational governments can use to prioritise low-carbon investments and identify funding gaps, as well as to mobilise additional sources of both private and public climate finance.




Democratic Republic of the Congo


Book Description

This technical report discusses the results of the Public Investment Management Assessment (PIMA) of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) undertaken in March 2022. Despite some recovery in the 2000s, the levels of public investment in the DRC remain well below the average for comparator countries, and access and quality of infrastructure are very poor, with major risks of deterioration. While the government aims to meet part of these needs by creating fiscal space, successful infrastructure development will hinge on improvements in investment efficiency, which can be achieved by strengthening public investment management practices. Public investment management in the DRC suffers from weaknesses across the whole project cycle, both on paper (legal and regulatory framework) and in practice. Efficient project management is hampered by administrative and legal fragmentation, which leads to dilution of capacity, and by budget credibility issues. This report proposes seven high-priority recommendations that could greatly improve public investment management in the short to medium term. The report also includes the results of the climate module of the PIMA evaluation, which reflect that the DRC’s commitments in the fight against climate change are beginning to feed into public investment management practices.




Samoa: Technical Assistance Report—Climate Macroeconomic Assessment Program


Book Description

Samoa is highly exposed to natural hazards such as tropical cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, and floods. These damage economic growth and impact debt sustainability adversely. Increasing frequency and intensity of coastal storms are likely to amplify damage to infrastructure and livelihoods. Slow-moving climate stresses such as sea level rise and increasing heat hazard are also likely to impact potential growth in the main economic sectors such as agriculture, fisheries, and tourism.




IMF Terminology Bulletin


Book Description

The world has witnessed transformational changes in recent years, not the least in technical parlance. With the massive amount of new and interdisciplinary concepts, the need has emerged to standardize and communicate emerging technical terms in languages other than English. The language Services Division of the IMF’s Corporate Services and Facilities Department prepared this thematic bulletin as a contribution to the international effort of linguists and translation experts, for the benefit of topical experts, member countries, professional translators and interpreters, and the general public. It is produced on the occasion of the 2023 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund in Marrakesh, Morocco.




Data for a Greener World


Book Description

Data for a Greener World presents a structured discussion on how to measure the economic and financial dimensions of climate change. It combines economic theory and analysis with real world examples of how climate data can be constructed for different country settings, based on existing climate science and economic data. The book identifies important climate data gaps, as well as practical and innovative approaches to close many of these gaps. The book discusses how to track greenhouse gas emission by production and consumption (Chapters 1-2), which lead to physical risks (Chapters 3-4) and transition risks (Chapters 5-7) and concludes with cross-border implications of climate risks (Chapters 8-9). The book also showcases a collaboration of seven international organizations: European Central Bank, Eurostat, International Energy Agency, International Monetary Fund, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, World Bank, and World Trade Organization. Chapter contributions come from leading practitioners and experts in the fields of energy and climate change issues. This volume also serves as a reference guide for the IMF's Climate Change Indicators Dashboard and future research in this area.