BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 8
Trend:
This year must be a turning point. The year 2020 witnessed a failure of global cooperation, but 2021 can usher in a new era that makes possible a healthier, greener, safer and fairer world, Trend reports.
230 WORLD LEADERS including 100 former Prime Ministers, Presidents and Foreign Ministers have issued an emotional plea calling on the G7 to pay for vaccinating the world.
At the same time an opinion poll taken across all the G7’s western members reveals 79% of the British people and over 70% of the population of G7 countries support G7 members paying up to deliver what they call ‘a healthier, safer, greener and fairer future’.
Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was one of the organisers, and Former President of Latvia and Co-Chair of Nizami Ganjavi International Center Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Former President of Finland Tarja Halonen, Former Prime Minister Helen Clark, Former President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic and Former President of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski have signed the letter.
‘Members of the Nizami Ganjavi International Center (NGIC), the Club of Madrid, the Global Leadership Foundation, the Global Women Leaders Voice for Change and Inclusion, the Berggruen Institute and prominent business leaders have also signed.
The great truth that has emerged from the coronavirus pandemic is that no one, anywhere, is safe from COVID-19 until everyone, everywhere, is safe. The first step, that will pay for itself many times over, is to ensure mass vaccination in every affected country. Support from the G7 and G20 that will make vaccines readily accessible to low- and middle-income countries is not an act of charity, but rather is in every country's strategic interest. Indeed, the IMF believes that such support would be the best public investment ever made in history.
The G7 and their invitees, who will meet this week in Cornwall, should lead the way by guaranteeing to pay 67% of the ACT-A (Access to Covid Accelerator) requirement for this year and next, based on a fair-share financing approach and financial burden-sharing formula proposed by the governments of Norway and South Africa, and a realistic assessment of a country’s ability to pay. The G7 should also lead the way in support of dose sharing and voluntary licensing agreements, potentially including temporary patent waivers that would allow vaccines to be manufactured on every continent with the necessary knowledge and technology transfer.
The world’s multilateral and regional financial institutions should be asked to release new resources for low- and middle-income countries to build capacity in their health systems. They should also support implementation of the detailed recommendations of the report to the WHO recently released by the Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response.
Global economic policy alignment is vital in rebuilding the world economy in the pandemic’s wake. We were fortunate that, over the last year, in the initial COVID-19 recovery phase, most countries followed similar policies, resulting in an acceptable level of policy alignment. What we need now, in this next phase, is an agreed global growth plan with coordinated monetary and fiscal interventions to prevent an uneven and unbalanced recovery – and ensure a more inclusive, equitable and greener future.
The IMF’s proposals for a synchronised push on infrastructure, including green infrastructure, across all continents, would, if adopted by the G7 and G20, raise global economic output by $2 trillion by 2025.
The G20 and G7 must also address the growing divergence caused by differences in health outcomes and uncoordinated macroeconomic policy approaches. While most advanced economies can look forward to strong growth and widely available vaccines, much of the emerging and developing world must face the new waves and new variants of the virus with depleted economic and social buffers. Many countries face rising debt and falling tax revenues, as well as declining aid flows[ folllowing a slow recovery in global trade and foreign direct investment.
With up to 150 million more people forced into poverty by COVID-19, and with widespread cuts in healthcare and education budgets, the pandemic may have delayed progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals by up to five years, with girls and women suffering most. We call on the G7 to extend their initiative on girls’ education and to support the UNICEF plan for digital connectivity that ensures the inclusion of all young people.
The G7 and G20 can help to bridge the financing gaps faced by vulnerable countries and act to restore a viable path towards the SDGs. This will require the multilateral development banks to deploy more finance, more efficiently, optimising their balance sheets and reviewing their capital adequacy framework, as already requested by the G20, and consider replenishments. In this respect, we need to examine new guarantee-based instruments to crowd in private sector finance for health, education, and social. safety nets, and we need to make progress on international agreements to curtail tax avoidance.
We must redouble our efforts to ensure debt sustainability for low and where necessary, middle-income countries, with an extension of the debt service suspension initiative and with broader participation by private creditors, and possibly by non-G20 official creditors, in the new Common Framework for debt treatment. Its success will depend on greater transparency on the part of both debtors and creditors.
This year is also a vital one for progress to be made towards reaching net carbon zero by 2050. In advance of the COP-26 meeting to take in Glasgow this November, the G7 and G20 countries must announce bold national commitments; require companies to disclose their carbon footprints; deliver on the proposed fund for mitigation and adaptation in low and lower middle income countries; and ensure that their economic recovery plans boost renewables and green infrastructure with corporates, cities, and the multilateral institutions all encouraged to be at the centre of efforts to achieve a sustainable net carbon zero environment.