 Hello everybody. Thank you for joining this fireside chat. My name is Carlos Gradín. I'm a research fellow at UniWider in Helsinki where I work on various research topics around inequality and I'm here today to have a chat with Anda David who is joining us from Johannesburg in South Africa. She's an economist in charge of the research programs on inequality, poverty, and international migration at AFD, the French Agency for Development. She also coordinates the scientific aspects of the European research facility on inequalities in partnership with the European Commission's Director General for International Partnerships. We are here today to chat about the challenges of inequality and climate change in the context of the COVID. So this is an informal session. Please feel free to participate in the discussion. You can use, write your questions in the Q&A in the session Q&A or you can request to be on stage and share your audio and video and address your question directly. So under COVID is putting under great pressure the labor markets everywhere, particularly in developing countries and it's also putting under pressure the fragile social protection system. So we've seen a lot of evidence of this during the conference. As such it will exacerbate existing inequalities at a time when these countries will also be facing other big challenges, more structural or long-term challenges like the effects of climate change. What do you think should be the priorities of public policies in this context? Thank you so much Carlos and just to say that it's great to be here in this really impressive conference and it's true that what we see in the conference also is this issue of increasing challenges both regarding social protection but also when we look at other aspects. So one thing that we are trying to work a little bit around is the fact and I think we all agree that inequalities and climate change are strongly linked and therefore it's essential to put both of these issues at the core of recovery strategies. Now already before COVID we had lots of signals that social issues aren't to be left on a secondary place when we act to curb climate change or mitigated consequences. I think that the yellow vest movements we saw in France for instance was just a glimpse of what's happening globally. Now that we see that states have been faced with the challenges of the pandemic it's time to rethink recovery strategies keeping in mind also what went wrong in the past and what were the drivers. So a first step is to think about what is the long-term strategy, what is the kind of society that we want to live in and how can the urgent actions that need to be taken now can be articulated with this long-term strategy. Yes companies need to be supported in order to survive lockdowns but this support needs also to be sought in relationship with the long-term goals such as reducing the carbon footprints of companies. Vulnerable households need to be supported with emergency grants for instance as was the case in South Africa but again the long-term objective should be a universal social protection system. So one of the priorities should be the sort of renewed social contract which not only allows for a social minimum for everyone but also a renewed sense of solidarity for for societies. More crises are coming due to climate change and societies which are more cohesive will also be more resilient. Now another priority should also be the strengthening of states' capacities not only to design but especially to implement policies. What we have seen with the current crisis is that states have lost very often the capacity to plan and this is something that we need to invest in and in order to invest in this and also to better understand the intersections between inequalities and climate change we need more research we need more data and this is also one of the reasons why both on the IFD and the EU side and lots of other donors are investing in in research programs such as the the EU IFD research facility for inequalities. Kind of this response to yeah for sure yes a quick reminder for our for the audience that you can address questions either through the Q&A or requesting directly to participating in the discussion live. I don't know if I'm because I also wanted to ask you a question on this because I know that you guys at UNU wider have a lot of experience on running policy dialogues and I think that one question that comes up when we think about how to support the states in in these challenges is also to identify which would be the most effective ways of engaging governments on topics such as inequalities and and climate change. Yeah I mean sure you know why there has done an important effort in developing partnerships in various developing countries so far. I'm not directly involved with most of them but as an observer I would say that I think it's very important to build a mutual trust among all partner institutions involved in these dialogues and engage in a very inclusive dialogue with all possible stakeholders involved policy makers sometimes maybe fiscal authorities. You mentioned that you need data to involve statistical offices, research institutions or universities that could provide you also a lot of context around the country. You need to listen to the civil society like NGOs or other organizations that could be interested and involved and could give you a better idea of what is going on. I think in the case of the climate change as you mentioned can be especially challenging because we know that some measures for example that help to fight climate change may be unpopular if they are not handled well like in France you mentioned your experience with the yellow vest for example because they can increase the price of energy or introduce restrictions on farming or but at the same time they can also create opportunities to mobilize resources for example that can be used to improve the situation of the most vulnerable. So I think that is very very important to continuously listen to civil society their needs they should be a very south to south dialogue so probably imposing magic recipes designed in the north knowing any office very well intention maybe very technical very effective but then they don't work in out of context. Well continued I mean with what we are discussing here you have a someone who is working you know at the core of the European development aid how do you think that official aid can help developing countries fighting this all a new economic inequalities including the effects of the pandemic but also the more long term consequence of climate change and maybe you can give us some specific actions or policies that the research facilities on inequality are trying to implement. Indeed as you mentioned it's a very challenging question also because for instance the issue of inequality and more precisely income inequality it's something that's quite new for the development world before the SDGs there wasn't any mandate for development institutions to work on this issue so engaging with partner countries on this topic it's not always easy and it's also not always the easiest task for us so one of the things on which we're working and again it links a little bit to what you're saying is the promotion of policy dialogues on the issue of inequality and climate change mostly based on local research and and making partnerships with local institutions. I think that one of the crucial points for aid in general in the next years is again to step aside from this northern perspective and to trust more local institutions. One of the tools for instance that states have to invest in and that can be used are the national development banks they need to be more mobilized in the recovery and to be involved in the development of the countries and for the last couple of years they weren't that much part of the conversation. Now I think there's also an issue of being more committed actually to both climate change and inequality reduction what we see for instance in in IFD that we very often have either projects on reducing inequality of access for instance or poverty reduction and projects on climate change and it's often difficult to make the bridge between the two at the operational level and also in terms of policy dialogue. One of the tools that we're starting to work with are sort of strategic memorandums of dialogue with partner countries in which we sit down with them and we decide on which should be the priorities in terms of applied research both on climate change and on the social aspects specifically inequality reduction and then together we decide on which should be the the research projects that then we we implement together so this is also what we've done in the facility we've worked for instance in Tunisia and Morocco and also in every coast both on issues of how do we tackle specifically spatial inequality in regard to opportunity how do we tackle climate change and now we're trying to see how we can move this together. I was wondering I mean because the first phase of this program was basically research in specific countries and I'm wondering I mean is there do you see a big gap between this more academic oriented research and the next step that you are trying to do that is mobilizing the society policy dialogue to implement specific policies that can have actual effect on people's lives. Yes and I have to say that this is also a part where we try to learn a bit from from you and why there on this because what we are trying to do in especially the second part of the facility which which we are launching this year is to specifically identify policy initiatives that can be supported through a little bit of research and then more policy dialogue and technical assistance if needed. So for instance in the first phase of the facility we've worked in Mexico on perceptions of inequality on perceptions of the fiscal system and then we sat down with the with the government specifically the previous minister of finances to think about how do we take this forward now and we have identified two priorities for the government which were also relevant for this facility one which is the role of environmental taxation and how the how it can have a distributive effect and how it can also be shaped in order to to improve its its impacts on the inequalities and the other one is the care economy and the link with the with the labor markets in South Africa for instance initially we wanted to work more on the gender aspects and the just transition now that those were discussions pre-covid so what we will be doing is working directly with the presidency in developing tools that can support their decision making processes in implementing and assessing afterwards the the employment stimulus that has been that has been set up in order to respond to the to the COVID pandemic. Thank you very much I think it's really a very interesting process I agree that somehow it relates to a part of the work you know why there has been done in several countries because it's like building this bridge you know between research that this can be academic and it's very interesting because it gives you empirical evidence not well grounded empirical evidence to see for example what kind of policies work with that policies don't work in specific contexts or identifying what are the the most important needs in terms of poverty or inclusion in terms of inequality even identifying maybe geographical areas that need more attention and at the same time trying to mobilize you know that a policy that I allowed around this to have an impact with sometimes the time is I mean the the way of working of thinking can be very different you know in the academic world and in the policy making context and I wonder in this dialogues what is the role of the civil society so a part of having partnership I would say with researchers no research institutions or with government and policy makers is they are or do you see any role for maybe NGOs or maybe international organizations based on those areas but mainly local no I think in local associations or networks that could help you identify in these policies or maybe identifying what kind of impact these policies could have that maybe it's not directly expected from the theory you know from the empirical evidence in our audience exactly so what we well when we we talk about socials of our civil society usually the academia is part of the civil society but we we try to to sort of make sure that other types of civil society are represented so we always have the the sort of national dialogue so we it's easier when when when there's no COVID so we can have these national workshops in which we consult we try to understand whether the what we had in mind is relevant and whether we should for instance add act add actors in ours to our stewing committees of projects it's more difficult to do now with the webinars so one thing that we are trying to do is also trying to to ask the civil society to propose projects so in the case of South Africa of course we have our research big research projects with with the local universities but also launched a call for proposals for such proposals together with the presidency in which we hope that smaller NGOs that do a little bit of research or that don't do research but can get to research partners could try to to to support our thinking about okay how do we actually assess the impact of employment stimulus what should we think about when trying to think about the longer term perspective of how how could a stimulus be implemented what's needed as a social policy wants the stimulus and etc so we would also try to involve them beyond that then as I have you will also have call for projects for the the civil society as such but I think that they are crucial in in thinking about a policy dialogue that's not just between researchers international institutions and and the government hey thank you since our audience is a bit shy in asking questions I would try to think the interest that people who want to follow up with this process what are the channels that they can participate or follow up with the developments maybe I think in both people who could be interested in specific countries that you are working and maybe you can specify you mentioned some of the countries I'm not sure it's all of them maybe you can specify what countries and also what in general what channels do you have to engage other people who would be interested in following up with this so we're interested in promising a process yes so the the four countries on which we will be focusing specifically in the second phase of the of the research facility so we will be mixing research and and support a policy dialogue are South Africa Indonesia will be specifically working on the link between equity and climate change and on how marine protected areas can get impact inequality both are the local and the national level we'll be working in Colombia also more specifically on fiscal issues and and global inequality we'll be working we'll be conducting our inequality diagnostics there as well and we'll be working in Mexico more precisely on as we're saying on the care economy and environmental taxation now in each country we will have workshops and and policy dialogues at which we hope to see as many people as possible I think that the best means to to follow up on the projects is our web page which I can also put in the chat and of course come back we have a global address which is the research facility inequalities I can also put that in the chat box on Twitter we have a hashtag which is research inequalities and plural and normally if you look at that you can find information about all of our past work where we've worked in more than 20 countries across the globe on themes of course always linked to inequality but we train from inequality and labor market to inequality and access to to water inequality and affordable housing etc so we can you can find all of that of course you can find on our web page and you can always send me an email it's always a pleasure to to to try to see which can be other collaborations regarding search regarding policy dialogue etc and we have a broader program working on inequality and and recovery we're also working south east Asia we're working in Mali in Mozambique etc hey thank you very much link in the chat yeah I think it's a very interesting process it's so people know how to follow up on that and just thank you for being here and please enjoy the rest of the conference and thank you very much to everybody who has participated in the chat thank you