This article discusses the links between climate and debt sustainability by focusing on how climate mitigation and adaptation are paid for, and who pays for it. This requires thinking about instruments such as sovereign bonds, carbon credits, conditional official grants and debt relief from both...

Sixty per cent of low-income countries are in “debt distress” or at high risk of it. The current sovereign debt restructuring framework leads to unsustainable debts over the long term, a continuing repeat of the crisis/debt restructuring cycle, economic stagnation and poverty in low-income...

All sovereign debt restructurings are inherently messy, expensive, exasperating, time-consuming and contentious. These are the familiar pathologies in the international system to resolve unsustainable sovereign debts. But the period since the onset of the Covid-19 crisis has revealed (to use a...

Sovereign borrowers needing debt relief in the 21st century must face three sets of creditors — commercial lenders (usually bondholders), traditional Paris Club government creditors and non-Paris Club bilateral creditors like China. Each of these groups will secretly hope to extract...

Bonds of the Russian Federation may soon slip into default. Once they do, the bondholders will be in a position to commence legal enforcement of the instruments and thereby add to the already considerable pressure on Mr. Putin to halt his invasion of Ukraine. Will they?

Contributions to solving the globe’s environmental crisis are properly expected to come from every country to a greater or lesser degree depending on their share of responsibility for environmental pollution and their financial resources. But countries in financial distress and already unable...

"This is the riveting tale of Argentina's sovereign debt drama, a complicated story that unfolds over 15 years and involves a host of characters, institutions, and issues. The country defaulted on its debt in 2001, restructured it in 2005, and was in court for the ensuing decade. The debt...

Lenders are perfectly free to decide for themselves whether, when, how, to whom and on what terms they will extend credit to a sovereign borrower. But all such loans will involve risks and those risks occasionally materialize. When they do, is a creditor obliged to cooperate with its fellow...