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A meeting that could change the way global finance is done has kicked off in France.

The Summit for a New Global Financial Pact is in Paris and is set up to seek financial solutions to the interlinked global goals of tackling poverty, curbing planet-heating emissions, and protecting nature, per Al Jazeera.

Around 40 global leaders have assembled in order to map out sweeping reforms of global public finance to bring trillions of investments from the private sector to development and climate action. Welcome. It’s about time, everyone.

French President Emmanuel Macron began by calling for a “public finance shock” to catalyse the decarbonisation of the global economy and help countries climb out from under a mountain of debt.

In his opening remarks, Macron on Thursday told delegates that the world needs a “public finance shock” – a global push of innovation and financing – to fight these challenges, adding the current system was not well suited to address the world’s challenges.

“Policymakers and countries shouldn’t ever have to choose between reducing poverty and protecting the planet,” Macron said.

Upon taking the podium, Ugandan climate campaigner Vanessa Nakate asked the audience to take a minute of silence for people who are suffering from disasters, moving on to call out the rich:

She criticised the fossil fuel industry, saying they promise development for poor communities but the energy goes elsewhere and the profits “lie in the pockets of those who are already extremely rich”.

“It seems there is plenty of money, so please do not tell us that we have to accept toxic air and barren fields and poisoned water so that we can have development,” she said.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley has become a powerful advocate for reimagining the role of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in an era of climate crisis, saying that:

“What is required of us now is absolute transformation and not reform of our institutions,” said Mottley, whose country has put forward a detailed plan for how to fix the global financial system to help developing countries invest in clean energy and boost resilience to climate impacts.

“We come to Paris to identify the common humanity that we share and the absolute moral imperative to save our planet and to make it livable,” she said.

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made a similar point about the state of the world’s economy:

The global financial architecture is outdated, dysfunctional & unjust.

Today I urged participants at the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact to take action to meet the urgent needs of developing countries. pic.twitter.com/cHFlkymzRw

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) June 22, 2023

Guterres said the global financial system, which was conceived at the end of World War II, was failing to rise to modern challenges and now “perpetuates and even worsens inequalities”.

“We can take steps right now and take a giant leap towards global justice,” he said, adding that he has proposed a stimulus of $500bn a year for investments in sustainable development and climate action.

The summit is also hoping to fulfil some old promises like the 2009 pledge to deliver $100 billion a year in climate finance to poorer nations by 2020, as well as to push for creditors to grant relief and restructure the debts of developing countries.

The COVID-19 crisis really made people realise the deep and ridiculous divide between the rich and the poor, with the wealthy only getting wealthier despite the world’s immense suffering.

Since the global economy has been battered by successive crises in recent years – including COVID-19, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, spiking inflation, debt, and the spiralling cost of weather disasters intensified by global warming – it is clear that the current system does not work and needs a good old shifting.

It is now or never.

[source:aljazeera]