Policymakers must work together to avoid the risk of a “new mediocre”—a protracted period of low growth—becoming the “new reality,” International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said at the Atlantic Council April 9.

“The ‘new mediocre’ growth environment is not a comfortable place with respect to financial stability,” she said.

Lagarde described the global economic recovery as “moderate and uneven.”

“In too many parts of the world it is not strong enough. In too many parts of the world, people do not feel it enough,” Lagarde said of the global economic recovery. “In addition, financial and geopolitical risks have increased.”

In advanced and emerging economies, potential growth is being pared down—a reflection of the “lasting scars from the financial crisis, but also the undercurrents of changing demographics and lower productivity,” she added.

Lagarde used her address to renew her call to the US Congress to ratify the IMF’s 2010 quota and governance reforms, which the Fund agreed to in December 2010. She also came out strongly in support of China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and said greater cooperation with it would help “reinforce” the international monetary system.