https://www.odi.org/60/global-reset-dialogue
Global Reset Dialogue
Over 10 million cases of Covid-19 and more than 500,000 deaths have occurred globally so far in 2020. The economic impacts are looking worse each day. Hard-won democratic rights and freedoms were already being challenged before the coronavirus struck and are even more at risk now. The crisis has also exposed a dearth of global cooperation and collective leadership. It’s in this context that we reflect on how the world has changed since ODI was established in 1960.
We are using our sixtieth anniversary to start a conversation about the practical steps required to create more resilient, equal societies and reimagine a world beyond coronavirus.
Over the next three weeks, our #GlobalReset Dialogue will share recommendations from a range of global leaders in response to the following questions:
- Who will step up to lead and shape the future of global cooperation?
- What actions are needed to ensure that we don’t lose ground on the progress made on human rights over the past decades?
- What has to happen next on climate change?
- How can we collaborate to emerge as a stronger and more equitable global economy?
We will add new responses every day, so please check back regularly for updates from Nobel Laureates, current and former heads of state, CEOs, eminent academics, civil society leaders and more. As ODI’s Chief Executive, Sara Pantuliano, wrote: ‘We can’t go back to normal, because normal was the problem’. We need a global reset that encourages effective leadership, just societies and the advancement of human rights and peace, alongside a sustainable economic recovery.
Follow the conversation @ODIdev #GlobalReset #ODI60
The response to the coronavirus crisis has generated a heated debate about international cooperation – or rather its absence. Some point to countries pursuing nationalistic agendas, and find international institutions badly wanting. They ask what has happened to the G20. Others leap to the defence of the World Health Organization (WHO), and cite the positive moves of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the EU. All agree, however, that the geopolitical context is in the process of transformation, in a multi-polar world where power is being wielded by new actors with different interests and aspirations.
New vision and leadership will be essential to dispel uncertainty and overcome the current crisis of legitimacy of the multilateral system. But what new forms of global cooperation can emerge from the Covid-19 crisis? What shape should they take? Is there still a role to be played by Bretton Woods institutions? What about regional structures and different networks of leaders, such as mayors of large municipalities, or civil society voices? And what new coalitions and ways of working could emerge?
Rt Hon Helen Clark
Former Prime Minister of New Zealand
@HelenClarkNZ
The Covid-19 pandemic moved quickly from a health crisis to a full blown economic and social crisis on a global scale. No single body in the international system has the mandate or means to lead a crisis of this breadth and depth.
What is called for is a standing Pandemic Emergency Coordination Council. It should be comprised of the United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG), the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the President of the World Bank. It should be convened by the UNSG at the earliest stage of a pandemic.
These four key office holders have huge convening power across leaders and key ministers. They should lead on mobilising resources and action to deal with the impacts of the pandemic, liaising closely with the G20 mechanisms. It’s time they used that power.
David Miliband
President and Chief Executive Officer of the International Rescue Committee
@DMiliband @RESCUEorg
Covid-19 has shown the dangers posed by holes in the global safety net. It is hitting the poorest hardest in rich countries. It is also now threatening poor countries, especially fragile and conflict states, with both a health and socioeconomic emergency. We need to learn the right lessons from our cooperation during Covid-19. For me these include the following.
- Fill the holes in the global safety net. Universal health coverage needs to become a goal with an implementation plan, not just a rhetorical hope.
- Address the weakness of global institutions. Covid-19 is a disease of mismanaged globalisation. We need a stronger, more independent, better funded World Health Organization (WHO).
- When governments are in retreat, civil society and the private sector need to step up. This is a different form of multilateralism, going beyond inter-state cooperation.
- The disease hits people and societies with a gender and race lens, and the response must do so too. For example, we know 70% of the global caring workforce are women, and so there is extra exposure to the disease. We need to recognise how inequalities are multiplied in a crisis, and build back differently.
H.E Abdalla Hamdok
Prime Minister of Sudan
@SudanPMHamdok
Since early March 2020, when Sudan first felt the impact of Covid-19, our world was shocked in a way that we have not experienced in the last century. Coming out of 30 years of tyrannical rule, the negative impact has been accentuated by the international community using “old rules” to determine the response to a virus that knows no national boundaries, be it rich or poor. We all feel the impact in the same way, but the magnitude is different.
Old international norms and rules of the game have been turned on their head. Whether a new international global order will emerge still needs to be seen. What we have learnt is that there is a need to focus on human needs – those of health, education, employment and food security. If there is to be a positive outcome from Covid-19, it will require a rewriting of outdated international norms and rules. We now have global pandemics to deal with in addition to global climate change. Global challenges require new, not outdated global responses.
With respect to climate change, greenhouse gas emissions were rising globally, not falling, before the virus struck. Will the expected fall in 2020 be a blip or can it mark a step change towards greener and more resilient societies? Some think the politics and financing of a climate transition will be easier after the immediateCovid-19 crisis. Others think it will be much harder to find the finance needed for transformative transitions, especially in poor countries with little fiscal space. Furthermore, there seems to be a tension between those who think the answer to Covid-19 recovery is accelerated economic growth, and those who yearn for a simpler life. Can those two really be reconciled by some version of green growth? And finally, linking these themes together, equality has been a prominent part of the debate about the Covid-19 recovery. Climate change hits some countries, regions, generations and social groups much more than others. How can action on climate change contribute to a more equal world?
Leena Srivastava
Deputy Director General for Science, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
@IIASAVienna
The world today has a unique opportunity to move from marginal changes to transformative re-development. Using decentralised models of growth, building on opportunities provided by digitalisation and artificial intelligence – with a focus on meeting service needs rather than promoting ownership of products – could ensure climate-friendly sustainable development with a more equitable distribution of wealth.
By deploying alternate ways for rewarding intellectual property to ensure continued globalisation of knowledge and opportunities, production must become localised and consumption responsible. The resulting reductions in demand for energy, materials, mobility and construction could drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
Simultaneously, the under-privileged segments of society must be empowered quickly through access to financial products and services, the digital economy and gainful employment. Developing a clear, inclusive vision for a new growth paradigm, operationalised by robust integrated policies and measures and incentivised by approved stimulus packages, may be the solution for a climate secure world for all.
Teresa Ribera
Minister for the Ecological Transition of Spain
@Teresaribera
The Covid-19 crisis has been unexpected, shocking and painful in many ways. We have learnt the importance of counting on a proper system to assess risks, strengthen resilience and avoid growing debt for young people and future generations.
That also applies to the climate crisis. And we already knew it. What next? Being consistent.
The protection of our common goods – climate, ocean and land – our natural capital, needs to be decisive. And by rooting climate and nature at all levels of public and private decisions, it can be.
Climate and environmental protection need to be put upfront, through a transformational approach to action, breaking our silo mentality with cross-cutting and inclusive solutions.
Governments are called upon to send the right signals. They can set up enabling frameworks to change the current state of play and help redirect public and private investments, consumption and taxation away from harmful subsidies and towards green priorities. Green budgeting, sovereign green bonds, carbon pricing and phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies deserve more attention. Financial regulation that mainstreams climate in portfolios and ensures we are ready to disclose and manage climate-related risk is also important. We need economic and fiscal policies to help promote a climate neutral, circular economy that protects our people and our ecosystems.
In short, this is about creating added value and making environmental, social and economic sense. There is no better way to build a more secure world, generate opportunities for decent jobs, wealth and fairness, and avoid the mistakes we made in the past.
Mary Robinson
Chair of the Elders & former President of Ireland
@MaryRobinsonCtr
Last January I was near despair. 2020 had started with no sign of the ambition needed from governments and sectors to comply with the IPCC’s 2018 report. Then Covid-19 hit the world in a devastating way. It was a health crisis, but it also froze the economies of the world and stopped business as usual. Covid-19 exacerbated existing inequalities but taught us that collective human behaviour matters, that government leadership matters, that science matters and that compassion and collaboration matter.
We cannot return to business as usual but must build back better with a green and inclusive recovery. Every country, corporation and city must commit to zero carbon by 2050, and we must restore biodiversity and plan nature-based solutions. This will require more borrowing at a time of global recession. But it is our children’s money we will borrow so that they will have a good future.
Covid-19 has initiated a churn in economic thinking. The traditional discourse on globalisation and export led growth, already beleaguered since 2008, is being fundamentally questioned. The problem of equity amidst unprecedented global prosperity has acquired an immediate urgency. Given the global impact of this pandemic and its cross-border consequences, is the traditional classification of developed, emerging and low-income economies still fit for purpose? How do we address the danger that increases in poverty and socioeconomic vulnerability of the poorest nations, and the poorest within nations? Will this receive insufficient attention? How will economic recovery and social cohesion be impacted by changes in production and consumption patterns, and our ability to cope with the human distress caused by this pandemic?
Professor Muhammad Yunus
Nobel Peace Laureate and founder Grameen Bank
@Yunus_Centre
Covid-19 has done us a great favour. It put the global economic engine to sleep. Suddenly we see global warming slowing and the machine for wealth concentration having a difficult time. The pre-Covid-19 world was approaching the finishing line of a long and disastrous path. The world was about to become unlivable for human beings; wealth concentration was becoming a ticking time bomb, about to explode. Covid-19 has saved us from reaching this finishing line. Somehow now we are in a hurry to go back to that world. Bailout packages of trillions of dollars are in readiness to make the economy wake up and take us to where we left off.
It is simply suicidal to go back. The sane option would be to take this excellent opportunity to redesign our economy by building new institutions, new concepts. We can use those trillions of dollars to make it happen.
We must redesign the financial institutions which are now the prime vehicle for wealth concentration. We must make them the vehicle for wealth sharing. We must create social businesses – businesses to solve people’s problems – with no intention of making personal profit. We must redesign educational institutions to inspire and prepare young people to become entrepreneurs, rather than job-seekers which buries their creativity.
We can create what we want. This is our choice. Covid-19 has brought us this grand opportunity to exercise that choice. We must not miss it.
Dani Rodrik
Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard University
@rodrikdani
Globalisation seemed in trouble before Covid-19. Will the pandemic be the nail in its coffin? Some retreat from the kind of hyper-globalisation we have pursued since the 1990s certainly seems inevitable, though I don’t think we are going back to anything like the protectionism of the 1930s. And if carefully managed, such a retreat need not be a big blow for economic growth and poverty reduction around the world, as those outcomes will depend largely on the domestic policy choices of individual nations.
Countries will have to put less emphasis on foreign trade and global value chains, as export-oriented industrialisation has long been losing its power as an engine of growth. Growth strategies will have to be based on generating good jobs for the nascent middle class, mainly in services. As for globalisation proper, the retreat may even be an opportunity to reconstruct a fairer, more sustainable globalisation, centered a bit less on trade and finance and considerably more on global public health and environmental challenges.
The UN Secretary General has called the Covid-19 pandemic ‘A human crisis that is fast becoming a human rights crisis’. Increased state involvement has arguably been necessary to manage the spread of the disease, but many fear that the extraordinary measures and emergency legislation governments have introduced to shut borders, enforce quarantine and track infected people may be the prelude to more autocratic and illiberal regimes. Even before these draconian measures were introduced, fundamental human rights were already reported to be under strain in many countries, with concerns over a universal surge in authoritarian nationalism and a retreat from international legal obligations.
The crisis also poses a significant threat to the maintenance of international peace and security, potentially leading to an increase in social unrest and violence. In conflict contexts, crises often provide a pretext for a long-term power grab or other abuses of emergency powers. Armed groups are using the pandemic to strengthen their positions, challenge sitting governments or reinforce their self-justifying narratives.
What are the key human rights issues raised by Covid-19? How can they be addressed? What actions are needed to ensure that we don’t lose ground on the progress made over the last 70 years? How can we leverage the opportunities presented by the crisis to build a more just, peaceful and gender-equal society?
Yves Daccord
Director General - International Committee of the Red Cross 2010-2020
@DaccordYves
We are living a time of stark political polarisation and in an increasingly “us” versus “them” society. Narrow political agendas determine who does not belong to “us” and result in marginalisation, discrimination and gross inequality at both national and international levels. The coronavirus pandemic – that has seen a crisis of international solidarity and cooperation - risks increasing and entrenching these divisions. We have already seen many cases of “them” – whoever they may be in a particular context - being denied human rights that are meant to be universal.
We need to be particularly vigilant in these turbulent times that human rights belong to everyone – to all of us as human beings – no matter our status, gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion or political affiliation. The time is now to categorically reject the prevailing “us” versus “them” rhetoric; to build on what unites rather than divides us; and to create a universal “us” around the notion of human dignity.
Noeleen Heyzer
Former Under-Secretary-General, United Nations
The social, economic and health impacts of the pandemic are unprecedented and have magnified inequality, insecurity and humanitarian challenges worldwide. People are becoming jobless, falling into poverty, hunger and desperation. The pandemic has not stopped wars and displacement. It has deepened violence and discrimination against women and girls on every front.
Its consequences have made clear that human society cannot succeed without addressing our human rights deficits and the social exclusion and fragility caused by inequality, poverty, conflict, environmental destruction, racism and gender discrimination. Societies that have invested in their public health and in the social contract with a protection floor of fundamental rights have built greater trust, unlocked the agency of everyone and achieved the most positive impacts.
It is precisely at times like this that the leadership and values of the multilateral system are needed. In this year of anniversaries (the UN Charter at 75, Beijing+25, 20 years of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR), and five years since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)), we urgently need leadership of women and men from the ground up, unhampered by power rivalries. These leaders must show courage to implement global human security frameworks, forge collaborative relationships, reimagine our world anew and find the financial resources needed to create a world free from want, violence and fear.
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