https://youtu.be/gMjW34XoiUo
This session will address urgent initiatives for a worldwide people's mobilization to generate resources for global needs. It will address the failed structures of global finance, trade and patent privileges. Ensuring the viability of the human species and the health and sustainability of the planet cannot happen without radically increased flows of financial resources. Expert studies and developing countries are projecting needs for responding to the climate emergency that amounts to trillions of dollars, rather than the presently agreed and unfulfilled amounts in the billions. IPCC indicate that to keep the 1,5 degree target there is a need for six times greater amounts than is currently promised for mitigation. And this before adding the accelerating financial needs to address adaptation and loss and damage. Likewise, the Covid-19 pandemic unraveled social inequalities and the failure to provide and distribute vaccines equitably to secure life and health for all. To reach the yet unfulfilled UN development goals, including reducing inequality within and among countries, an unprecedented mobilization of resources in line with equity, common but differentiated responsibilities and the right to development is hence imperative. What are countries’ fair shares?
But we also need to look beyond aid and climate finance – how is the whole global economy skewed against the less wealthy and formerly colonized countries? What structural changes are needed to reverse the present flow of trillions of dollars from the global south to the global north?
We need a more democratic multilateralism based on the principles of the UN Charter. This, as UN Secretary General Guterres stated, ”must include an overhaul of a global financial system that favours the richest and punishes the poorest”. The current trend in rich countries of reducing development assistance and diverting it to other purposes need urgent action and needs to be reversed.
Join us in a discussion that tackles these critical issues and challenges, and that looks to real solutions.