Avinash Persaud is impatient with his audience. “I was born into the moral imperative of development,” he tells diplomats gathered in March at the G-20 Sherpas Meeting in India. “My growing up was a realization that moral imperative is not enough.”
Development officials have descended on the lush coastal state of Kerala to discuss “woman-led development,” “bridging the digital divide,” and other subjects on which moral grandstanding is endemic.
Persaud seems short-tempered. He rushes through a flat personal introduction and moves on to the proposal he was invited to discuss: a plan to lower the cost of borrowing for green investment in poor countries. India, this year’s G-20 president, has asked this statesman from a tiny Caribbean island to give the keynote address.
Since 2020, Persaud, who is climate envoy to Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, has vaulted to prominence in the small and sharp-elbowed world of development finance, advising big industrializing economies such as Brazil and Pakistan. His warm reception in India is partly due to the lectures he won’t deliver. He is trying fix a lopsided global financial system, not nagging anyone to shut off coal.