 |
| Crisis after crisis - a shared test for humanity, says Antonio Guterres. UN photo (cropped) |
His study, Our Common Agenda, contains a grim list of stress points that highlight how the fabric of international well-being is unlikely to hold unless a combined effort is undertaken without delay.
However, the report, with its frightening outlook for humankind, seems to have been lost in a weekend where the news cycle was focused largely on remembering the 9/11 attack and sports events. That's a shame because its contents are compelling reminders of how the priorities of leading countries have created a furnace that is set to consume all that makes life on this planet possible.
The introduction lays out our predicament:
We are at an inflection point in history. The Covid-19 pandemic has served as a wake-up call and with the climate crisis now looming, the world is experiencing its biggest shared test since the Second World War.
Humanity faces a stark and urgent choice: breakdown or breakthrough. The choices we make — or fail to make — today could result in further breakdown and a future of perpetual crises, or a breakthrough to a better, more sustainable, peaceful future for our people and planet.
The United Nations was created after World War Two to manage conflicts between nation states. Today, it increasingly confronts issues across countries such as disease, poverty, migration, or climate change.
Our Common Agenda argues that:
The coronavirus disease (Covid-19) is upending our world, threatening our health, destroying economies and livelihoods and deepening poverty and inequalities.
Conflicts continue to rage and worsen.
The disastrous effects of a changing climate – famine, floods, fires and extreme heat – threaten our very existence.
For millions of people around the world, poverty, discrimination, violence and exclusion are denying them their rights to the basic necessities of life: health, safety, a vaccination against disease, clean water to drink, a plate of food or a seat in a classroom.
Increasingly, people are turning their backs on the values of trust and solidarity in one another – the very values we need to rebuild our world and secure a better, more sustainable future for our people and our planet.
Humanity’s welfare – and indeed, humanity’s very future – depend on solidarity and working together as a global family to achieve common goals.
The report's information on living conditions came from all around the world:
One message rang through loud and clear: the choices we make, or fail to make, today could result in further breakdown, or a breakthrough to a greener, better, safer future.
The choice is ours to make; but we will not have this chance again.
To look at the impact of the crises as analysed in the report:
The coronavirus disease pandemic has been a challenge like no other since the Second World War, revealing our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness. It has exposed human rights concerns and exacerbated deep fragilities and inequalities in our societies. It has amplified disenchantment with institutions and political leadership as the virus has lingered. We have also seen many examples of vaccine nationalism.
Let there be no illusion: Covid-19 may pale in comparison to future challenges if we do not learn from failures that have cost lives and livelihoods.
What awaits us in the scenario of breakdown and perpetual crisis without concerted healthcare action:
• Covid-19 is endemic, constantly mutating
• Richer countries hoard vaccines, no plan for equitable distribution
• Health systems are overwhelmed
• No preparedness for future pandemics
• Some countries are poorer in 2030 than before the pandemic hit
The scenario of breakdown and perpetual crisis without concerted environmental action:
• Owing to unchanged emission levels from human activity, global warming of 2°C will be exceeded during the twenty-first century
• Heatwaves, floods, droughts, tropical cyclones and other extremes are unprecedented in magnitude, frequency and timing, and occur in regions that have never been affected before
• The Arctic is ice free in the summer; most permafrost is lost and extreme sea levels occur every year
• One million species are on the verge of extinction, with irreversible biodiversity loss
• More than 1 billion people live with heat that is so extreme that it threatens their lives
The scenario of breakdown and perpetual crisis without action to reverse destabilizing inequalities:
• Continuous erosion of human rights
• Growing poverty, and massive loss of jobs and income
• Public goods like education and social protection systems are underfunded
• Protests spread across borders, often met with violent repression
• Technology fuels division
• New types of warfare invented faster than new ways of making peace
The report states:
Our best projections show that a stark choice confronts us: to continue with business as usual and risk significant breakdown and perpetual crisis, or to make concerted efforts to break through and achieve an international system that delivers for people and the planet. These omens must not be ignored, nor these opportunities squandered.
Before going to the report's positive scenario, one element that needs to be factored in is that of solidarity:
Everything proposed in this report depends on a deepening of solidarity. Solidarity is not charity; in an interconnected world, it is common sense. It is the principle of working together, recognizing that we are bound to each other and that no community or country can solve its challenges alone.
It is about our shared responsibilities to and for each other, taking account of our common humanity and each person’s dignity, our diversity and our varying levels of capacity and need. The importance of solidarity has been thrown into sharp relief by Covid-19 and the race against variants, even for countries that are well advanced with vaccination campaigns.
No one is safe [from the virus] until everyone is safe. The same is true of our biodiversity, without which none of us can survive, and for actions to address the climate crisis. In the absence of solidarity, we have arrived at a critical paradox: international cooperation is more needed than ever but also harder to achieve.
Through a deeper commitment to solidarity, at the national level, between generations and in the multilateral system, we can avoid the breakdown scenario and, instead, break through towards a more positive future.
Now for the scenario of breakthrough and the prospect of a greener, safer better future. First, that of a sustainable recovery from our present crises:
• Vaccines shared widely and equitably
• Capacity to produce vaccines for future pandemics within 100 days and to distribute them globally within a year
• People in crisis and conflict settings have a bridge to better lives
• Revised international debt architecture
• Business incentives are reshaped to support global public goods
• Progress to address illicit financial flows, tax avoidance and climate finance
• Financial and economic systems support more sustainable, resilient and inclusive patterns of growth
Second, the positive outlook for healthy people and planet based on solidarity:
• Global temperature rise is limited to 1.5°C
• All countries and sectors decarbonize by 2050
• Support provided to countries heavily affected by climate emergencies
• Just transitions to a new labour ecosystem are ensured
• A functioning ecosystem is preserved for succeeding generations
• Communities are equipped to adapt and be resilient to climate change impacts
Finally, with trust and protection the scenario looks like this:
• Strong commitment to the universality and indivisibility of human rights
• Universal social protection floors, including universal health coverage
• Universal digital connectivity
• Quality education, skills enhancement and lifelong learning
• Progress on addressing gender, racial, economic and other inequalities
• Equal partnership between institutions and the people they serve and among and within communities to strengthen social cohesion
Which brings us back to solidarity, specifically the search for the common good by way of a social contract:
A strong social contract anchored in human rights at the national level is the necessary foundation for us to work together. It may not be written down in any single document, but the social contract has profound consequences for people, underpinning their rights and obligations and shaping their life chances. It is also vital for international cooperation, since bonds across countries do not work when bonds within them are broken.
The inequality, mistrust and intolerance that we are seeing in many countries and regions, heightened by the devastating impact of the pandemic, suggest that the time has come to renew the social contract for a new era in which individuals, States and other actors work in partnership to build trust, increase participation and inclusion and redefine human progress.
The deepening of solidarity at the national level must be matched by a new commitment to young people and future generations, to whom the opening words of the Charter of the United Nations make a solemn promise. Strengthened solidarity is long overdue with the existing generation of young people, who feel that our political, social and economic systems ignore their present and sacrifice their future.
We must take steps to deliver better education and jobs for them and to give them a greater voice in designing their own futures. We must also find ways to systematically consider the interests of the 10.9 billion people who are expected to be born this century, predominantly in Africa and Asia: we will achieve a breakthrough only if we think and act together on their behalf for the long term.
To support solidarity within societies and between generations, we also need a new deal at the global level. The purpose of international cooperation in the twenty-first century is to achieve a set of vital common goals on which our welfare, and indeed survival, as a human race depend. Notably, we need to improve the protection of the global commons and the provision of a broader set of global public goods, those issues that benefit humanity as a whole and that cannot be managed by any one State or actor alone.
Just as the founders of the United Nations came together determined to save succeeding generations from war, we must now come together to save succeeding generations from war, climate change, pandemics, hunger, poverty, injustice and a host of risks that we may not yet foresee entirely. This is Our Common Agenda.
As part of the effort to rebuild trust among particpants in each society, the Common Agenda urges tax reform locally and internationally:
A reformed international tax system is needed to respond to the realities of growing cross-border trade and investment and an increasingly digitalized economy while also addressing existing shortcomings in fair and effective taxation of businesses and reducing harmful tax competition.
The G20 has agreed on a new international tax architecture that addresses the tax challenges arising from globalization and digitalization and introduces a global minimum tax for corporations, with a blueprint in place for broader implementation under the auspices of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The internet:
The internet has altered our societies as profoundly as the printing press did, requiring a deep reimagining of the ethics and mindsets with which we approach knowledge, communication and cohesion. Along with the potential for more accessible information and rapid communication and consultation, the digital age, particularly social media, has also heightened fragmentation and “echo chambers” [listening to only like-minded views]. Objectivity, or even the idea that people can aspire to ascertain the best available truth, has come increasingly into question.
Some facts and figures relating to the need for investment in social protection, meaning public welfare:
• The wealth of billionaires increased by over US$3.9 trillion between March and December 2020, while 4 billion people are still without any form of basic social protection.
• 92 per cent of African women are in the informal economy. This keeps them outside of social security systems.
• A total of $78 billion would be needed for low-income countries to establish social protection floors, including health care, covering their combined population of 711 million people.
The rationale for social protection is given here:
Social protection systems have demonstrated their value during the COVID-19 pandemic, saving lives and backstopping economies at large. Without the surge in State-provided social protection, economic damage could have been far worse. This is also the case for previous crises. We must not lose this momentum. A new era for social protection systems would be a foundation for peaceful societies and other measures to leave no one behind and eradicate extreme poverty.
I urge States to accelerate steps to achieve universal social protection coverage, including for the remaining 4 billion people currently unprotected, in line with target 1.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals. While the types and modalities of coverage may vary, at a minimum this means access to health care for all and basic income security for children, those unable to work and older persons.
Then there is work:
Decent work opportunities for all are also needed for shared prosperity. With the nature and types of work transforming rapidly, this requires a floor of rights and protections for all workers, irrespective of their employment arrangements, as laid out in the ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work. Workers should not shoulder all the risks when it comes to their income, their hours of work and how they cope if they are ill or unemployed.
Investment in sectors with the greatest potential for creating more and better jobs, such as the green, care and digital economies, is key and can be brought about through major public investment, along with incentive structures for long-term business investments consistent with human development and well-being.
The inadequacy of using gross domestic product to measure a nation's development success is expressed forcefully:
We know that GDP fails to account for human well-being, planetary sustainability and non-market services and care, or to consider the distributional dimensions of economic activity. Absurdly, GDP rises when there is overfishing, cutting of forests or burning of fossil fuels. We are destroying nature, but we count it as an increase in wealth. Such discussions have been ongoing for decades. It is time to collectively commit to complementary measurements. Without that fundamental shift, the targets that we have fixed in relation to biodiversity, pollution and climate change will not be achievable.
"Women's work" is given due attention:
In rethinking GDP, we must also find ways to validate the care and informal economy. Specifically, most of the care work around the world is unpaid and done by women and girls, perpetuating economic inequality between genders. COVID-19 also had deeply gendered economic and job impacts that highlighted and exacerbated the trillions of dollars that are lost owing to billions of hours of unpaid care work performed every year.
Rethinking the care economy means valuing unpaid care work in economic models but also investing in quality paid care as part of essential public services and social protection arrangements, including by improved pay and working conditions (target 5.4 of the Sustainable Development Goals). More broadly, we also need to find new ways to account for and value the vast informal economy.
More facts and figures, this time relating to the transition to a green economy:
• Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels, chemicals and other pollutants is responsible for the death of 7 million people every year, costing around $5 trillion annually.
• Shifting to a green economy could yield a direct economic gain of US$26 trillion through 2030 compared with business-as-usual and create over 65 million new low-carbon jobs.
The immediate task:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned us in August 2021 that we are at imminent risk of hitting the dangerous threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius in the near term. Every fraction of a degree represents lost lives, livelihoods, assets, species and ecosystems. We should be dramatically reducing emissions each year, towards a 45 per cent reduction by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050, as made clear by the Panel, yet temperatures continue to rise.
We should be shoring up our populations, infrastructure, economies and societies to be resilient to climate change, yet adaptation and resilience continue to be seriously underfunded.
Climate Breakdown or Breakthrough
Climate change - Transforming food systems:
• Sustainable food systems and strong forest protection could generate over $2 trillion per year of economic benefits, create millions of jobs and improve food security, while supporting solutions to climate change.
In conclusion, the "Moving Forward" section points to the 12 elements that have guided this report:
This vision builds on and responds to the declaration on the commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations, in which Member States made 12 critical commitments:
• to leave no one behind;
• to protect our planet;
• to promote peace and prevent conflict;
• to abide by international law and ensure justice;
• to place women and girls at the centre;
• to build trust;
• to improve digital cooperation;
• to upgrade the United Nations;
• to ensure sustainable financing;
• to boost partnerships;
• to listen to and work with youth; and
• to be prepared for future crises.
In the past, newspapers would have had the social responsibility - and the capacity - to do what I have done here, to mine an important international document in order to allow readers to develop their citizenship skills by becoming aware of what international leaders are saying about the needs of Planet Earth, and the care of the human family. I hope you found this material as informative as I did.
Ω Here is the best news report I could find in a check of all the main news sources relating to this significant document.
Ω The thrust of Our Common Agenda is contained in the 2015 letter to the world of Pope Francis, Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home. See here.
Ω If you like this blog,
go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified
when a new post is published.
No comments:
Post a Comment