Reporting and Opinion By Mathew Carr
April 22-24, 2025 — Is Kristalina Georgieva, supposed climate leader who has been serving as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund since October 1, 2019, just as bad as the climate-damaging men?
She does not seem to be prioritizing climate action urgently enough, with an IMF plan for a global carbon price floor effectively lapsing since 2021.
My take is she should be calling out Donald Trump, for instance, and isn’t doing that.
She should be saying the climate negotiations to make the Paris climate deal actually bite are even more important than the trade negotiations being messed up (?) by bully Donald Trump. Or is Trump creating an opportunity here for the likes of Georgieva?
I thought female leaders were meant to be more evolved than this. Stand aside, I say, if you can’t urgently do better.
Here is a picture of her. Will she take the opportunity this week presented by the IMF’s spring meetings, or fail again to get the world to collaborate? Is she just an American puppet or does she really want to help the emerging world deal with its most pressing problems?
From ancient history 2021; was this plan a pretence to make it look like the IMF was doing something, promising something to the global poor?
IMF pretty much confirms it will do what Trump wants…downplay climate…on April 24:
https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2025/04/24/tr-042425-managing-directors-press-briefing-on-gpa
Questioner: Thanks very much for the opportunity to ask you—to put a question to you. You mentioned Secretary Bessent’s remarks yesterday. He accused the IMF and the World Bank of mission creep and specifically the IMF on mission creep in areas such as climate change, gender policies and also social issues. Do you think there is a role in the future for the IMF in areas such as climate, gender, and social issues?
Ms. Georgieva: Thank you for your question. So, what do we do here? We concentrate on macroeconomic and financial stability for growth and employment. We have 191 members. They face different challenges. They face different types of risks to their balance of payment. And what we do is to analyze what these risks and what the Fund in our mandate and what we do on the fiscal side, on the monetary policy side, on the financial sector side, what can we do to help them be more resilient to shocks. So, when we have, for example, Caribbean countries that are wiped out by extreme weather events regularly, naturally they are very concerned about that, and they say how can we be more resilient to these shocks? Again, we focus on balance of payment. What are the risks and what can be done to protect the balance of payments in these countries.
I want to say that I actually agree with the Secretary on one thing. It is a very complicated world, a world of massive challenges of all kinds. We are a small institution. We are 4,000 people. Not very well-known, but a very fiscally disciplined institution. Our budget today in real terms is what it was 20 years ago. So, yes, we have to focus. And that is exactly why we engage with the membership, so we can make best use of the staff of the Fund. I really like to run a tight ship. Yes.
CarrZee: very disappointing to see IMF use the “we don’t have the resources” excuse when it knows that’s not true and that climate damage will take away huge amounts of resources. Georgieva could have prevented it. She could at least tease Trump and his reckless administration about their anti-woke stance …. a little. He and his team can take it. And this would save her reputation.
Yet even some treasonous poorer nations …such as Argentina (which is a bit of a puppet state of the USA, it has to be said ) are downplaying climate:
This from another press conference Thursday:
SPEAKERS:
Chair: Pablo Quirno, Secretary of Finance, Ministry of Economy of Argentina
First Vice‑Chair: Olawale Edun, Federal Minister of Finance of Nigeria
Second Vice‑Chair: Jameel Ahmad, Governor, State Bank of Pakistan
Director: Iyabo Masha, G‑24 Secretariat
MODERATOR:
Pavis Devahasadin, Communications Officer, IMF
QUESTION: Hi. My question is regarding—we have seen the U.S. called back on some of the financings that it gives to developing economies, so in terms of financing the sustainable development goals, as well as climate action, could you talk about some of the challenges there?
Mr. Devahasadin: Are your questions related to climate so we can collect them both? Anyone on climate here.
Mr. Quirno (Argentina): We face several challenges and as such, for that, many countries rely on the World Bank and the IMF, to basically be able to develop tools to finance that development, finance climate action, to finance infrastructure, and as such, we are at a period in which you have to—countries have to balance that in turn with their own macroeconomic situation in that respect. We need to—we have many of our countries in the G‑24 have significant natural resources that need to be developed. Those are the ones that are part of the transition energy, for example. And those are situations in which you cannot access private financing. The role of development financing in terms of climate, in terms of energy transition, et cetera, is very important. But those are challenges that are on the table that we need to address, and we are addressing together as a group and as an individual country as well.
CarrZee: The people will probably hold these so-called leaders to account when global warming kills, which it will. At least that is what the “leaders” are risking. Jail time.
