Debt-for-Climate Swaps

Debt for climate swaps are operations that involve the cancellation, exchange, or buyback of a portion of a country’s debt in return for policy commitments to invest the resultant savings in environmental conservation or climate change mitigation and adaptation projects. These swaps can include both official bilateral and commercial debt.

2030 Goals

While these swaps are unlikely to scale easily, an agreed-upon set of principles/legal framework should be created as the basis of debt-for-climate swaps, speeding up implementation and lowering barriers to entry for countries and debt situations where its implementation makes sense.

Test instruments that have previously been used for conservation to support coal phaseout, potentially in conjunction with offsets to support both the swap and the domestic offset market.

Status

No Progress

DFIs are keen to implement debt swaps but the contracts involved can be complicated, time-consuming, and often require philanthropic involvement, making them more difficult to implement.

In addition, stakeholders need to be identified on a case-by-case basis; public creditors may be able to offer partial or full forgiveness in exchange for climate commitments, whereas private creditors will likely need to be bought out using proceeds from new, lower-cost debt that benefits from guarantees or other concessional de-risking instruments.

Conversations on effective swaps are increasingly including economic and social development as priorities, alongside environmental / conservation KPIs.

While the absolute number of transactions has remained relatively modest, their size has significantly increased. Ecuador’s debt swap is particularly noteworthy, amounting to USD 1.6 billion and increasing interest in these tools. Most recently, Barbados completed the first evet debt for climate resilience swap, expanding from the typical debt for nature swaps that have come before. There is an increasing push to expand debt swaps to a "debt-for-development" framework.

Leading Actors

Cooperation is required between these actors and audiences to drive progress foward in Debt-for-Climate Swaps.

Public FIs

US Development Finance Corporation

Multilateral Development Banks

Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)

Leading Countries

Barbados

Supportive Stakeholders

Conservation International

Supportive Stakeholders

The Nature Conservancy

Supportive Stakeholders

The Pew Charitable Trust

Supportive Stakeholders

Re:wild

Supportive Stakeholders

The Wildlife Conservation Society

Supportive Stakeholders

World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

Key Milestones

Showcasing the key reform milestones for Debt-for-Climate Swaps that have been addressed at global events.

View Roadmap

13-19 April 2026

Washington DC, US

WBG/IMF Spring Meetings

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Sovereign Debt Architecture
Announcements from the IMF and World Bank on the review of the Low-income Countries Debt Sustainability Framework (LIC-DSF)
Debt-for-Climate Swaps
Discussions should focus on clarifying the role of debt-for-climate swaps within the broader sovereign debt architecture, including how climate-informed DSAs and IMF programs can accommodate swaps without penalizing countries’ debt sustainability assessments.

Learn More

Publications and educational material to deepen understanding of Debt-for-Climate Swaps.