Featuring
Christine Lagarde
Managing Director
International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Hosted by
Nancy Birdsall
President
Center for Global Development

Twenty years after the original summit, world leaders will reconvene in Rio for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. Ahead of the Rio+20, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde will focus on key challenges to be addressed by the international community in Rio. World leaders are faced with an economic crisis, an environmental crisis, and sometimes a social crisis that cannot be treated separately. The IMF has an important role to play in exploring how macroeconomic and especially fiscal instruments can be used to address these urgent problems. The institution has also highlighted that social and environmental problems really do matter for economic performance, and are themselves affected by macroeconomic performance.