UN agency calls for global Green New Deal to overhaul trade system

(Climate Change News, 25 Sep 2019) Current financial system cannot deliver public goods on the scale needed to cope with climate change, UN official says.

Only a global Green New Deal can provide governments with the monetary muscle needed to take on the climate crisis, a UN development agency report released on Wednesday said.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), which was founded in 1964 to help developing countries to access equitable international trade, called on governments to overhaul the rules of the international trade and money systems so that all countries – in particular developing ones – could carry out the necessary mass investments to decarbonize their economies.

Unctad secretary general Mukhisa Kituyi said meeting the UN sustainable development goals, which include reining in the heating of the planet, “requires rebuilding multilateralism around the idea of a global Green New Deal, and pursuing a financial future very different from the recent past”.

“The global economy does not serve all people equally,” said Richard Kozul-Wright, director of Unctad’s division on globalization and development strategies, who oversaw the report. “Under the current configuration of policies, rules, market dynamics and corporate power, economic gaps are likely to increase and environmental degradation intensify.”

Instead of hoping to fix the crisis in developing countries through a blend of public and private sector initiatives, which an Unctad press release branded as “taken from the playbook of banking conglomerates”, the development agency urged governments to take the lead.

Among a battery of global reforms, Unctad recommended granting debt relief and revising the way that debt was structured in order to allow developing countries to pay for green policies.

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Climate Change News, 25 Sep 2019: UN agency calls for global Green New Deal to overhaul trade system