What we need for long-term peace and prosperity

[Celerity]

Recent crises have exposed the shortcomings of our international institutions and growth-obsessed economic models.

https://socialeurope.eu/what-we-need-for-long-term-peace-and-prosperity



Russia’s war in Ukraine is a humanitarian catastrophe which violates the United Nations Charter and international humanitarian law and has exacerbated socio-economic and environmental crises around the world. It is also the latest manifestation of a global system which does not improve the human condition. Our imperfect responses to climate change, biodiversity loss, the Covid-19 pandemic, rising energy and food costs and war reveal international systems in dire need of redesign. An economic model predicated on the pursuit of indefinite production and consumption has confronted us with climate and ecosystem breakdown. The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change underscore the severity of the climate crisis and the narrowing opportunity for more climate-resilient development.

Green jobs

Governments need to deliver on pledges to align public support behind clean-energy investments and deployment, and to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels. But the war in Ukraine is increasing pressure on fiscal authorities to maintain and even increase support for fossil fuels and intensive, protectionist agriculture. Policy-makers therefore must recognise that the current crisis is an opportunity to invest in a faster transition to clean energy and resilient agriculture—all of which will create green jobs in the process. Climate finance should focus on those most affected by, and least able to address, climate change. Rising food and energy prices were already creating hardship for poorer countries before the war. Now, even higher prices have threatened a food-security crisis which the World Food Programme may struggle to address, given that it has historically sourced more than half of its wheat from Ukraine. Peace is necessary to ensure that all societies and nature thrive. But peace and long-term prosperity rely, in turn, on our ability to create an equitable, net-zero, nature-positive global economy.

This week and in the months ahead, governments and multilateral organisations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund will have an opportunity to lay the groundwork for achieving this vision. The IMF’s proposed Resilience and Sustainability Trust can help to ensure that the recently allocated $650 billion in special drawing rights (the fund’s reserve asset) will channel more cost-effective, flexible finance to the most vulnerable countries. At the same time, increased development finance can help to scale up green industrialisation and employment, while supporting those countries making the shift away from carbon-intensive industries. For its part, the World Bank must use its financial leverage to fund a faster and more equitable clean-energy transition. It should support countries suffering from the pandemic, the physical effects of climate change and the economic shocks of war by making a greater commitment to financing adaptation, facilitating concessional lending and deploying its risk-mitigation tools to help ‘crowd in’ more private finance.

Changing the rules

Beyond supporting a just transition, transforming the global economic and financial system means changing the ‘rules of the game’. Natural resources and nature’s services must be properly valued and externalities properly disclosed, priced and built into financial markets. We also need to change how we measure progress, because gross domestic product is no longer fit for purpose. Rather than helping us tackle our biggest problems, it contributes to them by encouraging over-consumption. Replacing GDP with a new yardstick that tracks wellbeing and prosperity across generations would encourage investment in natural and social capital, as well as a transition to a nature-positive global economy that respects and operates within the biosphere’s limits. The UN Sustainable Development Goals were meant to do that but we have yet to match those commitments with action.

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[mitch96]

1. I totally agree and I think the US military industrial complex would

HATE it. They can't suck billions from governments to make their profits... President Eisenhower was right back in 1961...

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address

Can you imagine all that money spent on arming ourselves was put to good use for humanity?
I can dream, can't I?
m

[Celerity]

4. Trillions, not billions.

Between on and off budget items and programmes, just at federal level, the US spends over $1.5 trillion per year in the war/security/surveillance state. I would not be shocked at all if it is now, or soon will be, over 2 trillion USD per annum. Maintaining the petrodollar matrix on a global basis doesn't come cheap.

And just wait until the total US healthcare expenditures start hitting the 7+ trillion USD per annum outlay rate come 2030 or so.

Better have the Treasury printing presses...

[marie999]

2. Wars will continue and as climate change worsens so will wars.

There will be less food and countries if they still exist, or other forms of government will go to war over food and other essentials. The very rich will have good lands and armies to protect them. Poor people will become slaves. When enough people have died, the Earth will start to heal and eventually return to normal when it will start all over again. That is unless there is a nuclear war.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

3. That is why we need

To curtail how much rich people have or can accumulate. For the well being of everyone this has to be done .

Capitalism is a failure.

When will the rich have enough?
Never and they wont stop robbing this country and plundering the Earth until they are forced to stop and share. The rich are spoiled brats dark triads,a danger to humanity.