HEADS of state, finance leaders and activists from around the world will converge in Paris tomorrow to seek ways to overhaul the world’s development banks.

While restructuring debt and reducing poverty will be part of the two-day summit, which begins on Thursday, climate will be the main driver, with representatives from developing nations in Africa, Asia and elsewhere having a seat at the table.

The World Bank and IMF have been criticised for not factoring climate change into lending decisions and being dominated by wealthy countries like the United States with the neediest nations most at risk of global warming left out of decision-making.

The Summit for a New Global Financing Pact will involve roughly 50 heads of state and governments with more than 100 countries represented.

The need for reform of the World Bank and the IMF takes on an added significance with the recent moves by the Brics nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) to establish a new international reserve currency to replace the US dollar.

Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley will play a major role as a leader of the Bridgetown Initiative, a plan to reform development lending by freeing up money after climate disasters and targeting the debt that developing nations face.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Chinese Premier Li Qiang, new World Bank president Ajay Banga, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva and climate activists Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate also are set to attend.

Masood Ahmed, president of the Centre for Global Development think tank in Washington, isn’t expecting much concrete action from the gathering but a broad agreement that “we’ve got to think much bigger, much bolder. We need to be willing to change.”

It’s been hard, however, to summon the political will to spend taxpayer money to combat climate change, said Mr Ahmed, a former senior official in both the IMF and World Bank.

For example, “in the US, we don't have in Congress today the kind of support that you would want to have for a major global initiative on climate,” he said. 

Climate advocates say they want to see meaningful commitments coming out of the summit such as new money to help climate-vulnerable nations build sustainable infrastructure or reallocating existing funds to new climate-related projects.

Andrew Nazdin, director of the activist group Glasgow Actions Team, said that the development banks “need to expand their lending if we’re going to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.”