This ‘new multilateralism’ is key to providing the foundation for global cooperation to tackle the many transnational challenges, including managing the risks related to, among other things, climate change, cybercrime, increasing conflict and refugee flows, failures of governance, and illicit finance flows. An essential component of global cooperation relates to the global financial safety net (GFSN).
Today, the GFSN includes international reserves, bilateral swap lines, regional financing arrangements, IMF resources and market-based instruments. While the size of the GFSN is larger than it was before the global financial crisis, the adequacy and coverage of the GFSN as well as its capacity to handle future economic and financial crises continues to be debated.