The west has broken its promises to developing countries – and we’re all paying the price......Broken  promises, missed opportunities and a failure to see the bigger picture: that’s the story of the west’s approach to developing countries in recent years. Money to help with climate breakdown has been pledged but not delivered. Vaccines have been hoarded. Aid budgets have been cut. From any perspective – be it geopolitical, economic, humanitarian or ecological – the indifference to what is happening elsewhere is disastrous. If the west wants to counter Beijing’s influence in Africa, to secure the raw materials and metals it needs for its green industrial revolution, to prevent a debt crisis and to have any hope of tackling global heating, it needs to sharpen up its act fast. No question, life in developed countries has been tough recently. High inflation has eroded living standards.Rising interest rateshave made it harder for households and governments to service their debts. Money is tight. Everybody gets that. But though life is tough in the west, it is a lot tougher in the developing and emerging world. As the World Bank made clear in its update on the global economy last week, poor countries are the biggest losers from the combined impact of the Covid pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the anti-inflationary measures taken by the US Federal Reserve and other western central banks. With good reason, developing countries view the protectionist elements of Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, and Europe’s proposed response to it, with concern. They want to be part of the green industrial revolution, not excluded from it by self-serving policy decisions in Washington and Brussels. While western countries have been preoccupied with their own problems, the situation in the global south has been growing progressively darker. The UN goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030 will be comfortably missed, the number of extreme weather events is increasing and the number of countries either in debt distress or on the verge of it is rising. To make matters worse, the global financial system is broken. Poor countries that borrowed in US dollars are being punished because US interest rates are going up. Money from the World Bank was supposed to be the catalyst for a wave of private sector capital to finance clean energy in Africa, but it isn’t arriving. A new system designed to speed up debt relief is unfit for purpose.  It is not hard to sketch out what needs to be done. For a start, there is some low-hanging fruit to be picked. In 2009, developed countries promised they would provide $100bn a year by 2020 to help poor countries reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for the impact of global heating. With one last push, the pledge could be met this year. Likewise, during the height of the Covid pandemic, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a $650bn tranche of special drawing rights (SDRs) – essentially a form of free money for member countries. Rich countries did not need the boost to their reserves provided by SDRs, even though they were the main beneficiaries, and were urged by the IMF to recycle $100bn to help poor countries. Again, the target could be hit with one last push.Next, the World Bank needs an injection of fresh capital so that it can lend more to developing countries. Under its last president, David Malpass the bank was overly cautious......and more       https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/15/west-promises-developing-countries-summit-paris-climate-vaccines-budgets