 Hello everyone and welcome to today's IID debates event hosted with E3G, a green recovery for inclusion, depth relief and SDRs for climate action. Hope you're feeling relaxed and ready to hear from the fantastic panel that we have here with us today. My name is Juliet and I'm the events of this IID and providing technical support during this event. Without further ado, I'm absolutely delighted to introduce Andrew Norton, IID director and our moderator for today's session. Andy, over to you please. Thank you so much, Juliet and welcome everybody. It's a huge pleasure to be here with a really great panel for today's discussion. In the area ahead of us, we want to explore together what is needed to support growing initiatives to improve debt management, particularly for countries which are highly vulnerable, both in terms of climate change, biodiversity loss, the pandemic situation and debt burdens. And we want to put a particular focus on the role of debt relief and also the IMS special drawing rights, SDRs, with there's been a lot of discussion of a new issuance of those somewhere between 500 and 650 billion for climate and nature action. We know that the burden of debt on low and middle income countries has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. We know also that that burden of debt was increasing before the pandemic. If you look at the data between, say, 2010, 2014 and 2015, 2019, there's a sharp uptick in debt burdens across low income countries and also low middle income countries as well. So and on top of that, you have the impacts of the pandemic. Research from IID and E3G has shown that as well as hampering a possible economic recovery, this debt distress also constrains the abilities of countries to cover the impacts of climate change and indeed to implement their own programs to mitigate climate change as well. The urgency for climate finance to mitigate the catastrophic climate and nature-induced damage continues. We're continuing to see shocking impacts of climate change all over the world. Some of the recent headlines, which are particularly striking, the hot season in Karachi, which is always difficult for everybody in Pakistan, happening earlier than it was supposed to start. And with temperatures well above 40 degrees and on an extended basis, that's really, really difficult conditions to work, live and survive in. And also, I'm sure many of you will have seen the coverage of the extraordinary heat down in the Pacific Northwest of the Americas, the mountain village of Lytton in Canada, reached a record of 49.6 centigrade, the exceeded weight by a huge margin, the predictions of previous climate models. I think what's really catching people's attention with this isn't just that it's a new heat record, we're used to seeing those. It's the level at which you bust the previous heat record for that area by 4.6 degrees centigrade, which really is extraordinary. So there is this sense of an accelerating climate crisis that it's essential that we find every means possible to respond to, and particularly to help vulnerable countries to develop their own responses. At this critical moment, therefore, we need finance availability to be upscale for climate action and for combating biodiversity loss. And we need new initiatives to build resilience and help countries develop their adaptive capacity. The principles of debt management for nature and climate outcomes is gaining traction as a way to relieve debt distress on lower middle income countries and to increase the spending on these objectives around protecting the natural world, but also enabling human societies to cope with the twin crises of climate change. And by diversity loss. There is growing attention being focused also, as I mentioned earlier on the reallocation of special drawing rights via the IMF as an avenue that can propel a green recovery to the pandemic and indeed also possibly be used for doing something to have more equality, more equity in the rollout of vaccines globally, which currently is appalling and inequitable with rich countries having far more access and in many, many cases being able to protect their populations many times over while poor countries really struggle for access. I think less than 1% of all vaccines delivered in the world have been delivered in Africa and that figure is not getting any better. So with the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting starting on Friday. Our panel today will explore these key issues and what would be needed to achieve a global debt initiative for climate and nature and for an equitable recovery to the global pandemic. So without further ado, please allow me to introduce our great panel for today. It's a real honor to have with us Flaviam P. Zubair, who is the Minister for Agriculture Climate Change and the environment in the Seychelles. He has worked in the Ministry of Environment for over 24 years and has held and served in several key posts. In 2016, the Republic of Seychelles agreed to protect a third of its marine and coastal area in exchange for a reduction of its debt in the first ever climate adaptation debt swap, which converted debt into investments in coastal protection and adaptation. And we're really looking forward, Minister, to hearing about this experience later. I'm also delighted to welcome Jeremy Zettemiah, who is the Deputy Director in the Strategy, Policy and Review Department of the IMF and has been there since August 2019. He has held positions at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. And he has published in major economic journals and is co-author of debt defaults and lessons from a decade of crises, a study of sovereign debt crises during the 1990s and 2000s. You're very welcome, Jeremy. We're delighted you can join us. And our final panelist is Laura, my colleague Laura Kelly, who is the Director of IID Shaping Sustainable Markets Group, a work that supports work on inclusive and green economies as its core mission. So to kick off, I'd like to invite my colleague Laura to the floor to set the scene with an overview of debt management and the use of special drawing rights, SDRs for climate and nature. Thank you, Laura. Thanks, Andy, and hello, everyone. Possibly like you, I would quite like to be on my way to Venice to participate in the climate summit there with Finance Minister to discuss these really important issues, but like many of us, we are stuck at home working remotely still. But I'm very pleased to be in such distinguished and knowledgeable company to talk about the issues, and I hope we will be trying to send a message from this discussion today about what the G20 should be doing in Venice. So to start off to outline some of the work that IID has been doing in this space, I'll just set up sharing my screen. Hopefully everybody can see that okay. So this is work that we've been doing for about six months now and it started looking at that debt crisis that Andy first mentioned. And the issues that we have of debt, climate change and biodiversity and climate change and biodiversity are very much on the agenda this year. There's the Climate Corp in Glasgow in November and the Kunming Biodiversity Summit. Sorry, my, it's getting ahead of itself. We've seen the high temperatures, we've seen loss of biodiversity, and one of the key things is that we need finance, we need investment in both climate mitigation and protecting forests, protecting species. And debt is creating a problem for that kind of investment that along with COVID, many countries, particularly poorer, lower income countries do not have that resource available. And here, as Andy was saying, is a set of data going back to the 1960s showing the increasing levels of debt that low income countries are holding. And I think one of the most interesting things about this is how the composition of that debt is changing. It's no longer just with the bilateral creditors, the so-called Paris Club. It's predominantly now with private sector creditors. And we're also seeing those private sector investors talking now a lot about net zero investment strategies wanting to make their portfolios climate neutral. So we see that there's an opportunity to target those private sector creditors as well to increase resources available for climate and nature. So moving on to this work that we've been doing, which we term debt management for climate and nature. The idea is that the creditor allows the debt to be managed in a number of ways by converting to local currency to being paid a lower interest rate. Or for there to be a debt right off and then new debt instruments such as performance bonds that would target nature and climate investments. And that these investments would be pro-ports. We want to see inclusive green recovery. Climate resilience is an area green jobs in renewable energy in mangrove rehabilitation. There's potential there to create opportunities for employment, particularly for poorer groups and particularly for groups who may have suffered as a result of COVID people who may have lost jobs whose livelihoods may have been undermined. So how could you actually try to do that in practice? We've been working on a project with funding from the Marvel Foundation in West Africa, looking at a number of countries such as Cabo Verde and Senegal where they've got significant biodiversity and climate challenges. But they're very interested in finding ways to increase resources for investment there and leveraging their debt to do that. Past debt swaps as they've been called have been much sort of smaller types of projects. We'll be hearing more about the Senegal, sorry, the Senegal's experience in a moment, but often they've been trust funds managed by international NGOs. What's the potential to learn from those potential shift to more systematic programs where money is channeled through budget systems. And it helps to build the sort of fiduciary standards and government's own capacity. But in terms of setting this up, we have to identify what are the key targets that which to identify that not only are agreed by the international community and by governments, but actually have a sense of local ownership. A lot of IIDs work focuses on local participation and solutions that really work for local people. And the advantage of this approach would be that it would allow larger amounts of funds to be liberated and investment. It would increase government ownership and it also increases accountability at national citizens. How does this then link to this issue of special drawing rights that we're hearing so much about at the moment. As Andy said, there's up to about 650 billion of STRs could be issued soon. There's a potential that these are basically controlled by the developed the wealthier countries, the potential to reallocate these to developing countries and to use for vaccines as we've been hearing to address that vaccine inequality, but also for this sort of green and inclusive recovery, particularly with the Kunming and Glasgow cops to actually demonstrate more financing being made available for these priorities. So what are the things that those finance ministers and G20 officials heading to Venice what should they be thinking about the next steps that we've outlined a potentially a highly indebted countries. So climate and nature initiative, a hicken initiative as we've turned it. The IMF World Bank, OECD have set up a platform to look into these issues so that that's an opportunity for G20 to support that, and to provide a stimulus for it to go forward, and particularly for pilot countries to take that are interested in the future, such as small island developing states are made of Grenada Cabo Verde to actually take that forward so G20 finance ministers could commit resources to support that. Also the G20 could send a very strong message to those creditors, particularly the private creditors, and China to join this initiative, the G20 debt suspension initiative has made some progress but it's had very little engagement with any from the private sector and relatively little engagement from China, mobilizing those special drawing rights, putting some of those drawing rights to support the platform, and then actually developing a commitment to this so a more understanding under the Italian presidency to ensure that things do go forward so the communique that comes out of the G20 we hope will be much more robust and say some more concrete things that will help to move this agenda forward than the we used to be good start a couple of weeks ago in Cornwall. Thanks Andy. Thanks very much indeed Laura. It would be great to get your reflections on what you think would be needed to achieve a global debt initiative for climate and nature, and also to stimulate an inclusive and green pandemic recovery, particularly in vulnerable countries. Thank you. Thank you so much, Andrew. So it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for for inviting me. So, first of all, we fully agree that the climate and biodiversity crisis are urgent and must be tackled with all available instruments. We also agree that those instruments in principle should include some form of conditional debt relief, as well as reallocated or rechanneled SDRs. Now, on on the specifics. The way we would think about debt relief in connection with climate and nature is not not so much as an instrument to solve a debt crisis, but as an instrument to solve the climate and biodiversity crisis. So the distinction is, is important because sometimes debt swaps particularly are oversold as an instrument that can tackle everything at the time, and that that is not necessarily the case. So if we have countries that have plainly unsustainable debts, those countries need to leave just to get back on their feet, even before thinking about climate action. Nonetheless, the reason why I think reflecting on conditional debt relief that swaps, if you like, in a broad sense, as part of our response to the climate and biodiversity crisis is is fair game is the lack of resources problem that Laura mentioned at the beginning. So, I think, you know, in principle, the model that maybe many had in mind when it comes to where resources are take a form of loans, you know, possibly very low interest loans, but not necessarily of transfers or debt relief grants or debt relief. Now, this works for some countries, namely the physical strength to repay the but it doesn't work for other countries, right, and that that may have different reasons, it may have one of the reasons may be that they have very little physical space because of preexisting debts. But another equally important reason is that the client, the climate problem may itself be generating a debt problem. So that that is the case, for example, when you have small islands that are really in their existence by by the climate crisis. And so for these cases, adaptation investments might be the only way to survive and from a debt sustainability point, they might be the wise. But even after a step might still be unsustainable. But so that is essentially the logic or debt relief in connection with the climate and major crisis. Now, in principle, of course, it doesn't matter whether the if you like direct fiscal support that such countries need based on debt relief, or just of grants, right, so these are equivalent instruments. And so, you know, as an institution, I think we would take an agnostic view on how the fiscal support is delivered, as long as it is not delivered in the form of loans that countries cannot repay. So for me personally, the question, you know, should this be debt relief, should this be grants is fundamentally a political question, whatever works better. And so one thing to bear in mind here is that when you focus on debt relief only as opposed to rounds, you are, in a sense, starting with the distribution of debt claims as it exists now, right. So the donors, if you wish, are the existing creditors, and not all countries organizations that might be willing to provide fiscal support are also countries organizations that hold lots of claims. So the fact that the district to low income countries is extremely concentrated, and the hands of just a few large creditors might be a global debt initiative so so so bear this in mind. So answering the question, you know, what is needed to achieve such a global debt relief interest initiative so that there's obviously a whole range of issues you know we the most obvious one which Laura touched on is that debt swaps have a bad name because they typically were associated with very high transactions on scale. So the scalability of this instrument is an issue. So there would need to be some form of addressing this. Laura has put out some ideas of how to do that. And there is, of course, in country ownership. So, you know, these are, this is conditional debt relief. So, in some sense, the creditor imposes its ideas on what to do with the freedom funds on the data country and this usually only works if the data country agrees right so that there is an issue there. But you know, most fundamentally I think the issue is one of coordination across particularly official creditors, not all of which may support this. And that has to do partly with what I stated before, namely that debt relief is very concentrated in some countries, giving those, I'm sorry, debt claims are concentrated in the hands of some creditors and, you know, making, you know, in a coordination across a group of countries that all want to have a say more difficult. And of course there's the general coordination problem, which is that, as always, when you have debt relief, the benefits of debt relief go to a shared by all creditors who's more likely to get the money back if the country is solvent. And in this case, who may also have direct or indirect benefits from the effects or biodiversity effects of such debt relief. There is a free writers problem right so it is in each creditors interest to have the others pay for this and then just enjoy the benefits and so this is a coordination issue that has to be solved. And at this level, we've done a lot and tried a lot and there is a lot of political will, but even the debt relief initiatives that have been agreed by the G 20 are hard work. And the political willingness to entertain yet another debt relief initiative this one focused on clumped biodiversity may be limited. So, so that is the main problem. And of course, you know, you, the NGOs and the think tanks you can contribute so this problem by. Okay, and then let me get. Yes, we ask be reallocated to support time vulnerable countries well in a fund fundamentally there are two ways to do this. The one is to reallocate them so so that I mean technically how the way this works is that, you know, countries receive would receive if if it is approved by the Board of Governors of the IMF as we expected to be probably in August a general SDR location and then these countries are free to do with this SDR location which is essentially a right to draw a cheap lending from the other countries in hard currency. They can do anything they want with these and so one thing they can do in particular is they could on lend their SDRs organizations or trust that in turn lends them to countries to data countries for a specific one option would be to do this on them to multilateral development banks strengthen their ability to do kind of funding. So that is an option that is being load. Another option could be to create a new trust of some form so this has been managed mentioned by my managing director Chris. And then the name resiliency. And so this would be if you like a dedicated pot of money that would top up IMF supported programs of countries to enable them to finance. Now if one goes the second route so this trust route is one difficulty that you have to bear in mind which is that this has to be in a sense covered by the legal constraints on IMF lending. And so one the most important such constraint is that we lend to countries in order to help them deal with a temporary balance of payments need. Now make the argument I think in my personal view you can easily make the argument that large scale climate related investments create such a temporary balance of payment which would justify drawing on such a trust. But what one thing that trust like this cannot do is project finance. So it cannot, if you like earmark this money to a specific project and then put conditionality, you know, send IMF stuff out there to check whether they use the. And that sort of thing might be IMF is not to its charters so conditionality associated with this type of trust would have to be policy conditionality. And policy conditionality in the climate area of course for the most part not entirely refers to mitigation less to adaptation. So for example, it's not so difficult. So those are let me stop you. Thank you very much indeed German that was fascinating. I'm sure there'll be questions from the audience in due course but let me move at this point to ministers you bear. It's a huge honor to have you with us. Can I just ask you first Minister to reflect on the socials debt for climate swap that I mentioned earlier. How successful. Do you think that's been. And can you give us some idea how the environmental performance of that instrument was monitored. Okay, thank you for, for having me. I think as you all know sessions with structured converted actually that 21.6 million sovereign debt in 2015 that was done. And the whole process was facilitated by the nature of conservancy nature best an arm of TNC. The trust was set up the sessions climate adaptation trust was set up around the time. And this trust is actually overseen by a board of trustees which comprises a person's and the trust will use the sessions that payments to repay the initial capital that was raised. And also to fund ongoing marina marine conservation and climate adaptation activities. And just to, to go into some of the details, the trust itself, what you're supposed to do is to eventually repay 15.2 million of the loan from TNC. And then also disperse 282,000 usd over 20 years in local currency. And that's going to be used for marine conservation and climate adaptation activities and also invest 150,000 usd per year over 20 years to an endowment fund endowment fund for future climate change and also conservation programming. So for us from the decision side, the trust has been set up the trust fund itself is already providing facilities for different activities in the country. And he is already delivering some results for us. For example, just to go over some of the things that he's doing. So it's actually providing alternative funding to the NGO sector that otherwise would depend on for example corporate social responsibility, or would have to fight over whatever amount of financing from external sources. And it's also the trust fund is also supporting research and uptake of sustainable aquaculture, for example, to protect livelihoods and food security. And also it's supporting small entrepreneurs and small businesses that diversify their business and enter into blue economy activities. So for Seychelles, we see that the trust fund, the whole proposal, the whole scheme has worked. And it's delivering on some of the results. And crucially, it's providing a lot of space for people in groups who would like to get involved in conservation and climate adaptation activities to actually get on with the different activities and move faster than we would have if we were just depending on external finance. So I would say it is it has been a success for Seychelles, but of course, this is not a solution for all of our debt. This is part of the debt. And now with COVID, and especially with the sharp downturn in tourism in the country, the country has suffered quite a bit and the debt to GDP ratio has gone up sharply. And so we are faced once again with dealing with the future when it comes to climate and biodiversity loss and coming out of COVID at the same time. And also, we are faced with a sharp increase in the debt to GDP. Seychelles want to go on track to have a 70% debt to GDP ratio around this time 2021, but certainly we find ourselves with a much higher ratio. And that is an issue for the country. We have to go back and maybe have another look at what is possible. And I think the proposal that is being put on the table that is being debated around using the special drawing rights, I think it's in the right direction. It could be an additional lifeline for small islands and countries that face this debt distress and that face increasing debt burden. And I think I would urge all our partners on the outside especially, but now we're talking to the G20 and the major lenders of this world, I would urge them to take a look at those options because for us as a high income developing country, I think the user story of when you become a high income developing country, you have access to a smaller, gradually you get squeezed, or not squeezed, but rather the access to financing is rather limited. And I think for countries like us, it would be important to have other options on the table like the previous presenter mentioned. So I think it's a step in the right direction. And I think it's something that we should continue to explore and develop over time and hopefully in the near future we will be able to offer that to some of the countries in the same situation as Seychelles. So thank you. Minister, thank you very much indeed. Can I just ask as a quick follow up. As you explained the Seychelles experience involved setting up an independent trust fund and working with the nature conservancy and so on. In this context of COVID recovery and the urgency that that imposes. I think that management instruments such as this. The funds could be usefully managed through through the main government budget rather than by setting up an independent trust fund. Do you think that would be a good thing to consider at this point. It depends on, I think it would depend on the structure that you have in place and the capacity and demonstrated the ability of the government to manage the funds. Each government has its own system and there are different metrics that measure the performance of different governments. But currently the trust fund that we have has got trustees who are looking after the funds and they are doing it in a sort of independent manner. And I would think that whatever system we decide upon and whatever approaches they can. There has to be this fiduciary oversight of this money. It cannot just be released into the government budget in a very general sense. There has to be oversight and very importantly it has to be linked with performance indicators. So somebody has to be tracking how all the different indicators are being dealt with and how far government is taking steps to actually achieve the original goals of the swap. So I think at the outset it's important to lay down all the ground rules. It's important to agree on the targets for the use of those resources. And it's important to agree on who should be monitoring the use of those funds. And I think if that's done we should find out something that is acceptable regardless of whether it's embedded within the government or in a fund that is partially or 100% outside of government. Thank you. Thank you so much minister that was really really helpful. And just a final quick question is this experience the debt for nature swap. Is this something that from a social perspective, you would encourage other climate vulnerable countries to develop or to look at these proposals. Well, I think the sessions experience has shown that we have to look at all forms of financing in order to achieve to achieve some targets when it comes to climate and weather conservation sessions. As we developed we as I mentioned we were faced with the issue of diminishing access to international funds. So we have to look at different options. And this is one option. There might be other versions of similar similar types of financing that can be brought to there that can be put on the table. And I think it's it's it's it's important that we have a whole menu of options for countries that can actually help us do this. I mean, get the right resources to do our adaptation. I mean, the sessions we just completed our national return contribution. But the main issue with the NDC, I think, as you all know, and also with the NBSAP with the biodiversity strategic action plan is how do we finance activities on the day. So I think the most important thing is to have a whole menu of options of the table grant financing and private financing blended finance, everything. And then which can give you a certain level of guarantee that you will be able to achieve a significant amount of those objectives that we set out to achieve. Thank you very much indeed minister and thank you German. Let me go now for some of the questions that have come in from the audience. This one is from Graham Gordon. And I think it's I'm going to direct it to you German initially. The question is how can we ensure that any new climate finance in particular from SDR is given as grants and not loans so that it does not add to the problematic debts and poor and climate fundable countries. So the answer is we can't. So anything coming from SDR is by definition loans, not grants. And the reason for that is that SDRs are given to the member countries of the IMF as a form of international reserves that typically maintained by central banks. And these central banks are typically legally borrowed to just give away the SDRs without a budgetary allocation. And so, you know, while in principle, SDRs could be given away and then the central bank could be compensated from the government budget. This would not have any advantage over simply the government budget doing a straight grant. So the nice thing about SDR, the SDR location, the reason why it is a source of potentially of climate finance is that there are ways of onlending the SDRs that members receive in a way that preserves their characters international reserves from the perspective of the central banks that own these SDRs. So we can do this in a way that minimizes the credit risk, that maintains liquidity, that enables those central banks to do it. So rather than just keeping them in their vaults, so to speak, they onlend them, they get paid a very low interest rate on them. But that is the limit. So it has to be lending at a suitably low interest rate. So it is more favorable in terms of debt burdens, the ways, there are ways of deploying it that are more favorable than the existing. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. I mean, the main advantage to pick up on what Minister Schubert said is that something like a resilience and sustainability trust would be accessible by middle income countries. So by what, you know, Minister Schubert referred to as high income developing countries, not at a zero interest rate, but at the SDR interest rates, which currently is almost zero. So it would provide lending at more favorable terms than countries like, as she shares, for example, can typically access to other fund facilities. Thank you very much indeed. Laura, do you have any thoughts on the SDR's issue and this question of how it can really help in particularly in this moment of triple crisis? Yeah, I think it is this point of the additionality. I mean, we're not thinking at IID about this being in any way, you know, a contribution to say the $100 billion climate finance commitments that developed countries have made to support low income developing countries. And I think Minister Schubert outlined very clearly the advantages for a number of countries that are now classified as higher income developing countries, but actually don't have access to concessional credit lines from the IMF or from the bank, and potentially are forced into the private creditor market. And that's where concessionality is likely to be much less, where some of the concerns some countries that have expressed, you know, not wanting to go into debt restructuring because of how that might affect their market access and how they're viewed by private creditors that actually adding this into the mix really increases the menu of resources that are available. And it is some of the countries, as Minister Schubert was saying, particularly climate vulnerable, particularly rich biodiversity that really do need access to these resources in some kind of concessional way. Thank you very much indeed. Minister Schubert, there's a question also about the relative balance of debt cancellation as against instruments such as STRs, that's from Gailer Montesson-Claire. What's your thinking about the priorities as it looks from the perspective of the so shalls, the advantages of the STRs route versus the practicality and advantages of simple debt cancellation. Thank you for that question. I think cancellation in itself is something that is everybody hopes for in life, so for any country I think that that cancellation would be the absolutely best solution. But we all know how the world operates, we know that the lenders at some point they might actually desire getting back some of what they have lent out to different countries, so it's not always possible to get that cancellation. But assuming that in dealing with a particular country and in coming up with a package, it would be good for the country and because it does create a relief for the country, it would be good if in the negotiation you can agree on STR debt conversion, but also some cancellation. I think Seychelles before he did the conversion benefited from some debt cancellation, that's a point, I can remember the exact dates, but then after that, going further he had to do this debt conversion, so I would say that debt cancellation should be in addition to debt conversion, which in total can give you a package that actually helps the country in a very quick just taking some of the debt and converting it might not be, might not make a significant impact on the country itself and it might not give you the design so in order for a country to bounce back like we have COVID now, we do need release that actually is significant substantial and that actually has an impact on the country so some debt cancellation to the extent possible, I think should be part of the package and in considering a particular party for countries like Seychelles, lenders might decide based on the history, on the economy and everything, but yes debt cancellation should be a part in the whole scheme of things. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. Jeremy, a quick question from me for you, we're seeing this figure, you know 650 billion around the STR issuance. There are a whole series of processes that will need to be gone through before the actual amount that could be realized for support to vulnerable countries would be determined. What's your thinking about the likely volumes that might be achievable through the STR issuance in practice. Do you mean the volumes that can be quote unquote re-channeled? Yes, that's it. So we don't know yet, it's too early to say. I think they would be substantial, but bear in mind that something like the current poverty reduction and growth trust Don't nail me down on this number, because I don't have it really in my head, but I think the bull park is something like 10 billion, 8 billion STRs, possibly something like that. And this is the main vehicle that we use to finance. And by the way, everyone can go on the IMS website and check the correct number. So this is much lower. I mean, the point is, too, is that this is an order of magnitude lower than the total allocation. And so even if we were to channel a relatively small amount of the total allocation into these trusts relative to the typical size of those trusts, which are quite important, it would be a big effect. The current about somewhere between 18 and 20 countries or so that lend to the PRGT, right? The PRGT is already a trust that is based on re-channeled STRs. And so we would think that maybe we'll get a similar number of rich countries that are willing to do this. Okay, thank you very much for having a go at that. And we understand that this is unknowable at this point, but many thanks for having a go. A question here from Kit Nicholson. And again, I think ministers, you bear if I could channel this to you. The question is past budget support initiatives for climate change adaptation have struggled to define performance frameworks that reflect outcomes rather than activities. So is there an acceptance that specifying activities as the delivery framework will be sufficient to justify approval of debt relief? Do you sense that that is possible given that the out trying to specify outcomes is going to be a big challenge? Thank you for that question. It's always much more difficult to specify outcomes compared to activities themselves. But I think to the extent possible we should try and define the outcome, even though in some cases we might not reach the exact outcome within the timeframe that the program is ongoing. But we should aim for a certain level of outcome and try also to measure it. But as a country, we've had a lot of experience with activities with defining programs in terms of activities and I think that works very well. But in my mind, I think we have to go further. And over time, the different groups and individuals involved in these projects, in these programs, they should try and define ways to actually measure outcomes. It's possible that we have to extend the timeframe, have to look at ways to actually gather information and ways to report on the outcomes. But it is always necessary, I think, especially when we're talking adaptation or talking about making up for loss of biodiversity. We have to aim for the bigger picture and for the bigger outcomes that is actually the original intention of all those efforts. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I think there's time for one more question, which I'd like to direct both to Jeremy and Laura. This is again from Graham Gordon. And it's asking about, given the limitations, both of volume and the nature of the delivery channel of the PRGT. He says, surely we need to think of new and other ways of channeling SDRs to tackling COVID and supporting a green recovery, e.g. directly to the Green Climate Fund and COVEX, etc. Laura, do you want to have a go at that first? Well, I was also just going to follow up on the question about the KPIs. So I mentioned a project that we're doing currently in West Africa. And we've developed a methodology to try to really get at this issue of KPIs that are actually about outcomes rather than activities or outputs. And I can't do it with the tech at the moment. But if you'd like to go and take a look at our website, if you look under the DexHops project there, you'll see we've published a how to note on that. But we do recognize that that's really important. So that's a slightly easier question to answer. The more difficult one on new ways to channel SDRs. I mean, I think we've seen during the crisis these figures are probably a little bit out of date now from a couple of months ago. I think it was estimated that around about $12 trillion of stimulus packages had been set out and only about 0.5% of that was from developing countries or for the least developed countries. So we have actually seen developed countries access huge amounts of finance. So I think that they're probably we are at a bit of a tipping point of trying to do things differently. And I think the challenge with getting the IMF to do things differently is that it's the board of directors. So it is all of the key countries that have to agree. And that's why, you know, potentially G20 finance ministers in Venice should not just be thinking about their own recoveries but really thinking about the global recovery and the role that they can play in supporting countries, by providing finance, but by looking at the international architecture and seeing what changes I'm not saying, you know, completely radical overhaul. But what are some of the kinds of things that could be done potentially shorter term to address the crisis that they could come up with. I'm not quite sure what exactly they would be, but I think that's the kind of spirit that we'd like to see. Thank you very much Laura and Jeremy. What would be your reaction to that in terms of a broader, more creative approach, either to using SDRs or finding other ways of channeling, channeling support at this point to vulnerable countries in the context of the recovery from COVID. No, I'm, you know, completely in agreement that we must find new and creative ways to channel support and that, that, you know, conditional debt relief should be on the table with respect to the SDR route. Remember, this is once the general allocation has happened. This is the money of our members. And they're free to do anything they want with it. Now they, you know, could channel this money to the current PRTT, they could channel it to multilateral development banks, they could channel it to a new trust. They could channel it to the Green Climate Fund, possibly, but when you think of these channeling options, the important thing to bear in mind is that for the most part, this is money that is in the, on the books of central banks that want to be able to treat these monies as international reserves. That is the fundamental constraint. And so this is why using IMF administered trusts is kind of a popular option, because it enables us to structure these trusts in a way that meet the needs of these central banks. Whether the Green Climate Fund could do that, I don't know, right? Maybe something worth exploring, but this is the reason why one is somewhat constrained when it comes to the use of these SDRs, right? The willingness of these countries to onland these SDRs. The reason why, you know, sometimes this is viewed as a windfall is because, you know, from the perspective of these central banks, they say to themselves, look, these are just reserves on our books. Whether these reserves are used for a different purpose while we don't need them is of no concern to us, provided that the credit risk of these users is very low and that we can access them at any time, right? And so what we do with these trusts is we create, if you like, a structure, a solution, a financial solution that enables squaring the circle that they continue to be reserves from the perspective of the creditors countries, the owners of the SDR. But at the same time, they can be put to good use and that requires a lot. It's a technically complicated problem to solve. Huge thanks to our three panelists. I think that was extremely helpful and enlightening and it was great to have you with us. And I'm sure it will have been much appreciated by the whole audience. So many thanks to Laura for kicking off so well. Huge thanks to German for making time to do this and to engage in these debates also hugely appreciated. And particularly, massive thanks to Minister Jubea in your incredibly busy time frame to make time for this. But I think certainly for me, it was very enlightening and I hope most of our audience will also have got a great deal out of that. It's not a simple issue. There are a lot of technical details within it, but it is a really compelling issue at the moment for addressing the climate crisis, green recovery from COVID-19 and the crisis of nature loss on a global scale as well. So let me just finish by thanking all our participants. We had some great questions in as well, but many thanks to all of you for contributing to the session and also huge thanks to our IID team working behind the scenes. We will share a link to the recorded session soon on our website and by email to all of the participants. So many thanks indeed. And I think at this point we can wrap up, but thank you all very much. Thank you.