Webinar Summary: Building a New Multilateralism for a Global Just Recovery
On Friday, April 9th, the Boston University Global Development Policy (GDP) Center, in partnership with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) hosted a webinar discussion on the role of multilateralism in combating climate change with climate finance, just recoveries and a Global Green New Deal, as part of the Global Just Recovery Gathering. Moderated by the GDP Center Policy Coordinator Katie Gallogly-Swan, the discussion included UNCTAD’s Richard Kozul-Wright, Southern Africa Trust’s Masego Madzwamuse, Third World Network’s Vicente Yu, Public Services International’s Gabriel Casnati, and international human rights lawyer Kavita Naidu.
Kozul-Wright, Director of the Globalization and Development Strategies Division at UNCTAD, presented an overview of UNCTAD’s sphere of direction in accordance with their annual Trade & Development Report. He first explained some of the significant trends in global macroeconomics, such as the declining wage share and corresponding rising profit share, the erosion of public services and the rise in stock of global carbon emissions.
He also provided reasoning as to why it will take a “new deal” to fully address these issues. According to Kozul-Wright, the original New Deal was both a political and economic agenda, acting as a transformative power in response to the anxieties of its time. He stressed that the language of the New Deal plays a role as well, representing an alternative economic strategy that is ultimately a new social contract between the people and government.
A Global Green New Deal, a shared set of principles to guide an effective multilateralism, could reverse the effects of climate change and other adverse trends of hyperglobalization, he explained. Kozul-Wright concluded by arguing that reforms are needed at the international level, to accomplish necessary goals, such as increased policy space, a debt jubilee and a reconsideration of regional trade agreements.
Next, Naidu, an international human rights lawyer based in the Pacific discussed climate finance, explaining how a globally reparative response to climate change is needed, especially in the Global South and explained climate finance as new and additional resources provided by developed countries to support climate action. As part of the call to assist developing countries who are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, Naidu discussed amending the established Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitment, in which donor countries pledge to help the Global South at a minimum of 0.7 percent of their GDP.
As contributions have been made in uneven and insufficient amounts, new alternatives to the ODA have been implemented in recent years. She explained that the Global Climate Fund (GCF) is currently the world’s largest climate financier, investing in low emissions development with the stated aim of helping vulnerable countries adapt. Yet, she stressed that this money is not distributed to effect systemic change: much of it is distributed as loans to countries who are already in severe debt distress, large portions of the GCF are dispersed to private actors who extract benefits themselves and that $100 billion is quite simply not enough to meet climate actions needs.
She also provided examples of the ways in which financial resources are drained from the Global South, such as illicit financial flows, unequal trade exchanges, and fossil fuel subsidies. As the power and dominance of the Global North against the Global South is reinforced through this flawed system, she argues it is clear the Global North owes a financial redress to the developing nations who have historically been exploited. The necessary solution, Naidu concluded, hinges upon the Global North being held accountable for climate reparations and providing financial aid in the form of grants, rather than loans or credit schemes.
Yu, Senior Legal Advisor at Third World Network and author of a recent report on Green Deals and Implications for the South, explained how the global economic system is skewed in favor of the Global North, building from Kozul-Wright and Naidu’s previous points. “The Global Trade Regime and the Global Climate Regime,” according to Yu, has become less cooperative and more competitive, despite its original intention to be an international cooperative regime. He described how the kind of systematic imbalance in both regimes plays a role in shaping how developing countries react to aid flows and requires a new kind of international cooperative framework.
Yu posited that a potential solution could be the Global Green New Deal proposed by Kozul-Wright, which allows for international cooperation that is both integrated and synergistic. He further discussed the monopolistic legal regime currently in place, which acts as a barrier to flexibility for developing countries, exemplified in the current intellectual property laws preventing additional COVID-19 vaccine production. Yu concluded by arguing that while globally there is a lot of money available, it is largely misspent and ultimately not received by developing countries, leading to a greater consideration of Special Drawing Rights, debt relief initiatives and other additional sources of finance to boost public interventions.
Next, Madzwamuse, Chief Executive Officer at Southern Africa Trust, began her contribution by discussing the status of climate change in Africa. She explained that the continent is highly vulnerable to impacts from climate change, despite contributing only 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to Our World in Data. She provided statistics to further explain this impact, highlighting that Africa loses between $7 billion and $15 billion each year as a result of climate change and is predicted to see a further decline in GDP by an estimated 3 percent by 2040, as reported by the World Bank.
Madzwamuse discussed the role of global governance institutions and how recent actions taken to address the severe impact of climate on the continent have been inadequate. She provided the example of EU funding for climate action in Africa, where the bulk of this financing was dispersed through loans, which ultimately contributed to increased mistrust in the multilateral system. She briefly touched on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations as well. Following the trajectory of UNFCCC negotiations, according to Madzwamuse, there is a visible systematic dilution of the principles that were the original foundation to this agreement, which originally called for nations responsible for climate impacts to pay and repatriate affected countries.
The solution, concluded by Madzwamuse and echoing her counterparts, is to provide developing countries with policy space to respond to adverse climate impact on their own terms. One example where this has not been supported is in the preference for technical versus systemic solutions. She discussed what this has looked like within agriculture, which has seen the continuation of the so-called ‘green revolution’ at the expense of local and regional agroecology approaches. She argued that these false technical solutions are a barrier to systemic and climate-friendly change that can advance rights and development.
Finally, Casnati, Tax-Trade Coordinator at Public Services International, discussed the trade union movement and its work towards a global just recovery in Latin America. As a trade unionist, his perspective is that governments must work to rebalance economies in the interests of people, health and climate, which includes strengthening public services through sustained public investment.
Casnati argued that multilateral trade tariff policies do not exist in isolation, but interact with international economic measures which can negatively impact the region. An example of this is the impending EU-Mercosur trade agreement, which he argued will impede the robust development of economies in the region, while also devastating natural resources. He additionally described the role of the private sector, whose constant pressure to maximize profits makes them an unfit partner to resolve the climate crisis, as they are likely to resist many of the systemic solutions. Casnati concluded by explaining the need to generate political will to make deep changes and to challenge global powers and called on union members to act now in support of this movement.
Collectively, the contributions from the speakers pointed to the importance of a more realistic and reparative approach to financing climate action, aligning the trade and climate regimes to accelerate both decarbonization and development, focusing on systemic transformation that is routed in locally-determined strategies and rebalancing power between public and private sectors to enhance public services and labor rights.
The Global Just Recovery Gathering website has additional resources for climate action and recordings of other webinars from the conference series.