 action this July for a just recovery from the global COVID-19 health pandemic. Some people call it building back better or a just recovery, but either way we want a recovery that puts people first with investment in good clean jobs, centering racial justice, climate justice and support for countries around the world to do this well. In just over two weeks time G20 finance ministers are meeting to discuss how they spend public money, our money, on a recovery from COVID and there will be the EU summit on recovery also. We need to remind leaders that there is a clear choice here, either it's back to business as usual with bailouts for big corporations and extractive industries that drive climate change and injustice or globally we take a new direction and we invest in a just recovery for all. We're here today to support and rally each other to action. We're living in unprecedented times and never has taking action been more urgent. So thank you so much for joining. Everyone is really crucial to this and we all help in our different ways. We at 350 have some template actions that I will share with you as we go along on this call and please make sure that you do sign the petition at 350.org forward slash G20. But wherever you are, you can adapt actions to suit you. The point is that we want as many people as possible to participate. I'm really happy that you're here and I really hope you enjoy the call today. Just to run through our speakers we'll have Sharon Burrow from the ITUC joining us. Then we'll be hearing from Arunabha Gosh from the Council on Energy, Environment and Water from India. Liddy Nakpil from the Asian People's Movement on Debt and Development. Nakabuya Hilda Flavia from Friday to Future, Uganda. Lubna Sayed Kadri from Wadha Nathoda Abiyan in India and Tasnees Aesop from Cannes International which is a really great lineup and I'm really excited to hear from everyone today. A quick note on participation. You will be muted for this call but you can ask questions. Just use the Q&A box. It's not possible to ask questions directly as we go through the call so please just write your questions into that box and we will collect them and try to answer some at the end. We have some colleagues supporting us on tech and you can use the chat function to direct message tech help and Nona, Jenny and Katie will respond and thanks to them for that and you can type anytime into the chat. Just make sure that the chat is set to all panellists and attendees and as I mentioned we are recording this and we'll share the YouTube link afterwards if you'd like to share it with others. Right so now we've finished with housekeeping. I'm delighted to introduce you to Sharon Burrow from the ITUC. It's vital that we put unions and workers front and centre when we talk about a just recovery so I'm delighted that she's here to speak to us today. Thank you Sharon. Thank you and a just recovery and just transitions. I love it and thank you 350.org for your leadership because business as usual is not acceptable. We know what the failed model of economy bought for us. It actually bought a convergence of crisis even before COVID-19 that was a crisis of inequality. It was income inequality, racial injustice, gender injustice and our world was divided. It was already driving an age of anger where you saw civil unrest. It bought us the climate emergency with the fight just to get the dangers to our homes, to our livelihoods, to our very lives actually recognised. So the climate emergency front and centre and of course it also then morphed from a health crisis which we have to actually stand up and say never again will we see our health and education and public services underfunded but now the social and economic impact the fallout is extraordinary. We could be witnessing the loss of 300 million jobs in the formal economy and of those workers in the informal sectors it is in fact 1.6 billion workers of that 2 billion or so who are already facing destitution. That's just a calamity that is extraordinary. It's also morphing into a human rights crisis and many leaders are hiding behind COVID-19 to bring in the worst of the authoritarian laws and indeed attacks on workers, on civil society, activists, indeed the very citizens of their countries themselves. We released our global rights index this week and 85% of countries have violated the right to strike. 80% of countries have violated the right to bargain collectively. The number of countries that impeded the registration of unions increased to 89 from 86 in 2019. They're the attacks on unions and we know that the attacks on civil society organisations are equal to that. So we have a lot of work to do. Building back better okay but it sounds like we really want the same foundations just better. New normal same thing so just recovery is exactly what we want. No more business as usual. We must have a recovery where people and the planet are aligned. It's that simple. So last week we actually held a huge national international conversation, the biggest conversation on earth and thank you for your support and it was called Kapow climate and employment proof our workplace. How do we bring those things together? So we build together a better future that actually gets us that alignment that we want and gets us a just economic future. Not one that is wedded to the 1% or to shareholder privilege or any of those neoliberal frameworks that have left us short of a focus on people and their rights to be included in economic prosperity. I wanted to focus particularly today because as we go from crisis to recovery and we'll be in this coexistence mode for many months if not years yet but recovery we've spent some 10 trillion dollars on the crisis and we've seen some advances in the social contract but as now we look to job creation to environmental sustainability we know that massive investment is going to be necessary in sustainable infrastructure in industry policy to transition to that next zero future. We know that investment in our public services is just unquestionably a priority. Investment in care we saw those frontline workers the majority of them women some of the lowest paid workers putting their lives on the line for us risking their health and that of their families and we must see that that investment is there but we also need to repair of ecosystems we need to look at where it is that we can drive jobs and sustainability together and to do that financing the recovery will be our biggest challenge. So as the G20 Finance Ministers meet let me just give you a list of the things that we want and I hope we can fight some of these together. An extension of debt relief we with a whole lot of allies we saw 12 months of debt suspension for the most vulnerable countries but now the African Union with Cyril Ramaphosa in the lead is actually calling for two years while we might want to see some debt cancellation we're going to back in the two years as the start and we're saying an inter conditionality that's about austerity but rather the only condition has to be that those nations invest in the sustainable development goals. We want to see indeed an agreement for a broader scope of drawing rights always an economic debate but with state inflation effectively then it can be afforded and the liquidity swap mechanism can allow some of the more generous countries to again help with fiscal space in the vulnerable nations but we want to see if you think we've got a 10 trillion spend already could be twice that by the point at which in the recovery we get to some hope then it cannot be accepted that we can't find around 35 billion dollars for five years to actually support a universal social protection scheme for the poorest and most vulnerable countries that's the very bare minimum the governments can do internationally in coordination so that will be a big ask for us if we don't put resilience in the form of social protection and job security under our people then the future looks very bleak indeed we also of course want significant attention to taxation measures many of you with us have fought for an end to the illicit flows out of developing countries but also to just taxation measures in our own countries some of that the elimination of tax havens the transparency of corporate ownership has to be back on the table but so too does a digital tax and the transactions tax we fought for for so long to actually expose speculative capitalism we also want to see a wealth tax and I don't want to take Oxfam's thunder but I think we will see them release our report on just how wealthy the wealthy are and it's time they gave back so this and more we can fight together but it will take indeed a long-term approach we have to see what we call patient capital and our pension funds actually there's around 40 trillion dollars invested in the global economy it must be patient it must be based on the conditionality that all all companies have to face around both sustainability and around measures like tax and and the rest and we'd certainly want to see reform of the Britain Woods institutions along with the WTO and of course even a review of our central bank mandates we need transparency and for all the corporations activities and the investors we need mandated due diligence where they have to be forced to assess the risk to have grievance procedures and indeed to affect remedy with all of us in the in support of that the EU's promised to mandate due diligence they've actually promised renewed taxes like the digital tax we need to see this through but finally on the EU they gave us a window of transparency where they open the door to patient debt as well as patient capital because we saw rather the last crisis that evil marriage of the bond markets and the ratings agency simply kill economies when they were struggling to get back on their feet this time at least the EU recovery package has half of its funds towards an environment where nations can get support but it could be 10 years or so before they pay back when they have the capacity to do so that's probably medium term but we certainly need reform of the way we think about the financial system the G20 finance ministers are critical to all of this if they don't lead along with the OECD countries then of course we know that the most vulnerable of our countries are left in just that situation so we value your support and your partnership and indeed in return you'll have ours this is a fight for all of us to see that people and the planet are aligned with an economic future that is indeed just thank you thank you so much Sharon it's really really motivating to hear you and a great reminder that when we talk about our money our jobs our future our lives this summer that is what this is about jobs are a crucial part of that world leaders have failed us but workers have not so thank you and without further ado I'm going to pass the microphone to Arunabha Ghosh from the Council on Energy Environment and Water from India thank you for joining us today thank you Aggie and good afternoon everyone it's afternoon here in India I don't know what is the time at different places around the world but very nice to be here thank you for having me I represent the Council on Energy Environment and Water which is an independent policy research institution in India that works on using data analysis and outreach to explain and change the use reuse and misuse of resources we've been ranked amongst the 20 best climate think tanks in the world we are of course faced with an extraordinary situation where we've faced with a confluence of shocks public health shock a shock to the economy a shock to employment and decent jobs a shock to administrative capacity and a shock to social cohesion coming out of this is not going to be easy but we also believed that India went through the toughest and the largest lockdown in the in the world we believed at CEW that imagination cannot be locked down so what do we do when we try and come out of this we focused on prioritizing equity we focused on looking for new investment and growth opportunities that would also have high jobs coefficients and we looked for opportunities that would be more resilient and more sustainable against future shocks using that framework we came out just a couple of weeks ago with this document called jobs growth and sustainability a new social contract for India's recovery the first economy-wide pathway that has been outlined and was released by a senior cabinet minister with more than 25 000 views on launch but what does it say we simply argue for a new social contract that would rest on two core pillars pillar number one would be a commitment to jobs growth and sustainability and the second pillar would be building resilience against tail end risks risks that have very low probability on paper but can have devastating impacts if they come true let me start with the latter and come back to the first in a minute in the time that we have released this report in two weeks ago and since then the official climate change assessment from the government of India has found that over the course of the century India is going to be hit by climate change far worse than the rest of the world on average for instance sea level rise in the north Indian Ocean with one and one and a half times the mean sea level rise across the world our calculations at CW shows that since 1972 we have about we've been faced with about 478 extreme weather events most of those have happened after 2005 in the past 20 years or so India has suffered about 80 billion dollars in damages because of extreme weather events so a razor sharp focus on tail end risks is necessary to protect vulnerable infrastructure vulnerable communities the one there are several ways we've outlined how we go about doing that step number one would be to build a detailed high resolution climate risk atlas on which sea level is already working so you have a 25 kilometer by 25 kilometer grid to understand the kind of impacts that different parts of the country will face we need to have heat action plans for our cities we need to have much more climate resilient infrastructure for the new cities that are coming up we need to have what we call an integrated emergency surveillance mechanism and we put out a design for it and we need a unified emergency response framework that can involve the citizens in the emergency response before during and after but there is that other pillar about jobs growth and sustainability about how do you rebuild this economy when we are faced with severe unemployment and a likely herd of recession and we argue that there is if we start squaring the so-called impossible affinity of jobs growth and sustainability we find a lot of opportunities starting with the micro small and medium enterprise sector which has more than 60 million enterprises in India and employs more than 190 million people a bulk of India's work non-farm workforce once we start giving them just as a Sharon was talking about give them appropriate working capital of insurance mechanisms protection for livelihoods they can then become the backbone for the the Indian economy but let me also give a few specific examples and close off this intervention over the last three years India's renewable energy infrastructure has beaten its build out of thermal power infrastructure but we believe that actually you can have significantly more about 30 billion dollars of investment can come in with a small amount of a credit enhancement subsidy from the government a build out of one point sorry 160 gigawatts of solar and wind can create a workforce of 330,000 people there is already news that there's possibly more renewable energy targets that can come out which can create up to 530 million 530,000 jobs with 130 gigawatts of wind and 200 gigawatts of solar but even small scale infrastructure distributed energy creates seven times more jobs than utility scale solar so there's huge potential there so final question then arises who will pay for all of this and this is where the way we allocate subsidies and government spending becomes critical we spend seven times more on fossil fuel subsidies than on renewables or electricity or electric vehicles if we started redeploying these resources shutting down our 25 year old coal power plants gives us more than two and a half billion dollars in savings compared to spending two billion dollars and cleaning up those plants so these are ways some of the ways in which we can create the resources to then invest in the community resilience to then invest in the jobs and then invest in the enterprises that actually can build out most sustainable infrastructure these two pillars for a new social contract is the is the pitch from CW and once again thank you for having me i'm happy to answer questions thank you so much for that really interesting intervention yeah really really great to hear and I just want to remind people how amazing it is that you know we've had so many people come together in this time in this short period of time where the global pandemic kicked off and we've been responding with our just recovery work and all the amazing partners that have come together we've had over 1200 organizations officially joined forces for a just recovery which is which is great and they represent you know we will have people taking action around the G20 moment and and the summit in over 150 countries and we've had hundreds of thousands of signatures tweets and more all supporting a just recovery and just to say this is just the beginning this is only the beginning we've come together in this short period of time and our speakers are demonstrating already how much effort thought and work has gone into positioning positioning countries around the world and people around the world for a just recovery which is I find it really really inspiring and so thank you so much for that and I'm now going to pass the microphone to Liddy Liddy Nakpel from the Asian People's Movement on Debt and Development. Thank you Liddy. Hello everyone good afternoon it's afternoon where I am based which is in the Philippines. I was asked to well I'm going to start up my video and see if it works. Okay yeah so I was asked this afternoon to speak a little bit more about one of the things that actually Sharon mentioned in terms of what are the immediate things that need to be done in this time of COVID-19 pandemic what are the immediate things that people need and so that they can cope with this pandemic and survive and in fact what is really very important is to lead us down a path of changing the system the economic system that we have because clearly this is the system that has made our people even more vulnerable to the pandemic and one of the problems of this system is the debt problem and which is what Sharon touched on in terms of the immediate demands. This has been a problem of course pre COVID-19 pre pandemic pre economic crisis we have been dealing with this issue for decades in the south and especially in Europe it's it wasn't saved from this problem as we saw the dramatic eurozone debt crisis that happened that unfolded just several years ago. This problem is one of the reasons why our health systems were not just simply overwhelmed but so so inadequate to deal with a crisis because we have been left with health systems especially in the south that are have been very poorly supported by governments we have been left with health systems that have been privatized so very very weak and very small public health systems in many of the south and part of the reason for this is that for decades our governments have been prioritizing payments of debt and have been in fact asked to privatize our health systems as one of the conditionalities for continually accessing loans from international financial institutions from bilateral creditors and even from private companies and private banks. Right now the immediate call about the debt problem is for debt cancellation and debt relief and that is immediate because so much of our resources right now are tied up still with continually paying for this debts outstanding debt of the total number of the whole total developing countries is more than 2.9 trillion dollars and more than half of this is actually owed to what are called official creditors or government and parastatal institutions and almost two-thirds of this is owed to actually private banks and the financial markets and so a lot of our resources instead of going to immediate responses for the health pandemic instead of going to immediate emergency assistance for those who are really badly hit not just by the the response measures to the crisis but also the economic crisis that is part of the impacts of COVID-19 so there's very little left actually that our governments are able to mobilize for this. The current debt relief responses have been very very small compared to the huge need and the urgency. Sharon mentioned of the debt suspension of payments for instance and cancellation of payments for one year. The cancellation of payments was offered by the IMF but that's only good for one year and the suspension of payments it's not even cancellation of payments but a postponement or delay of payments was offered has been offered by the G20 countries but only good from May of this year to December end of this year so an immediate call of course is a wider and far-ranging debt relief response to this not just in terms of amounts because the amounts are very very small compared to the need and compared to the huge service that service that is being offered that is being paid by our countries but there's also very small number of countries that are actually involved for the IMF debt relief there's only about 25 countries that are eligible to receive this and by the way may I add you know many of our colleagues are also say it's very important to point out it's not actually that cancellation because what the IMF is doing is that it's going to make available funds to pay off what is being spent by our countries for for debt payments during this period so that our countries will not be paying it so it's not actually a cancellation it's actually the IMF taking over payment for some time and our critique about that is of course that means there's there's not much sacrifice or actually there's there's nothing being given by the official creditors or lenders because they are going to be paid but by the instance and for the G20 countries the G20 offer of debt pension only about 72 countries are eligible for this and these are the countries that are listed under IDA under the World Bank list of what they call impoverished countries and so we need much much bigger relief and responses to this situation not just in terms of amounts but also in terms of the countries that will be covered by relief but we're also saying in as much as this is really a very important chance for us to reboot and reset the economy globally and inside our countries it is also very much the time to start taking steps to address the problem of the debt far more comprehensively and far more strategically than just the offer of very very partial debt relief for a very short period of time for a very number of countries and when we say strategic we are also pointing out that the justice is a very urgent question in the in the problem of the debt this is not just about the capacity to pay for many countries but in fact very centrally a question a question of justice because we are posing a very fundamental question and that is why are we being made to pay for debts most of which our people have not actually benefited from we know that many of these debts were what we call supply-driven so these debts were being peddled by lenders and creditors to our countries for decades until we accumulated debt to the extent that it's dominating our economy and economic management we also know that a number of our governments have been involved in very corrupt activities given this debt many much of this debt and you all may say it's history because it's happened 20 years ago but we're still paying off debts that were contracted by dictatorial governments some of the debts we may no longer be paying to the original editors but the succeeding governments borrowed from new sources in order to pay off the credit the dictatorship debts and linking this to the the climate practice a lot of these debts have been used to actually build infrastructures that have been exacerbating the climate crisis like energy energy infrastructure to this day we are still paying off huge debts in the billions that were used to support fossil fuel projects in many developing countries so there are very important questions that need to be raised other than just the capacity to pay other than just the need for loans at this very critical time and that is a very basic question of justice why are we being made to pay for debts our money our resources our money as taxpayers are being made to pay debts most of which have no have had no real benefit to our people so that's one of the issues that we are raising when we're talking about a just recovery that that justice must also be included in that and I'd really like to say I'm very happy that we're talking about this issue now because we have been saying that this time at this very critical time we need a renewed debt movement around the world in order to you know underscore the urgency of this problem and it's a matter of literally survival for many people in the south thank you very much thank you so much liddy for this crucial reminder of the importance of debt relief in enabling a just recovery and this really is about justice and that does mean debt relief and reparations from all debts um it's it's our money and it's about what we want to stop funding but it's also about what we want to invest in so thank you so much for that um I'd like to pass the microphone now to uh Nakabue Hilda Flavia from Friday to future Uganda um really excited to hear from you today take it away thanks you for having me can you hear me we can hear you thank you okay well I am Hilda Flavia Nakabue and I'm a climate activist from Uganda I am part of the global school strikes for climate uh that were initiated by greater than back and we continue to strike every Friday to remind our governments that we need climate justice well uh today we are talking about our money our jobs our future but the money we want and the jobs we want and the future we hope to live depend on the kind of lives we live now well my mom always tells me that life is what you make it right now we are facing two global challenges amidst us staying relevant that is climate change and COVID-19 climate change is a global problem and so is COVID-19 they have no boundaries they affect each and every one of us regardless of the gender color status age and our actions to fight these crises will depend on our future and the lives we want to live tomorrow well the pandemic has created a big economic shock and its existence has met taking very different decisions on the environment in a way that focuses on what's vital and this new normal needs to continue even after COVID-19 more people or many people attitudes have changed but however good our intentions as individuals are it will take a lot more of determined moves by governments and corporate organizations to make sustainable decisions to help build momentum towards global mobilizations and actions around these global challenges in order to have a just recovery for the case of Uganda my country we have been experiencing um we were recently hit by had floods as a result of changes in the rainfall patterns attributed to climate change several settlements on Lake Victoria and other lakes and rivers in Uganda have been washed away by floods leading to several displacements of people destruction of crops and other properties like infrastructure which includes schools roads bridges hospitals among others well an estimated 173 000 people were affected by the floods in May this figure is of May and forcing some of these people to relocate to temporary confinement and safety making other climates making others climate refugees in other regions while such conditions of displacement and overcrowding in shelters will most definitely compromise the COVID-19 response measures of social distancing among others and furthermore COVID-19 being a public health crisis well floods are known to trigger outbreaks of waterborne diseases and malaria which compounds the vulnerabilities of communities to COVID-19 well in response to COVID-19 the Uganda national meteorological authority seasons rainfall outlook says that this climate change effects are not about to stop this means that the floods are affecting the efforts to deal with COVID-19 due to the displacement of people and the destruction of infrastructure which includes hospitals well since such communities have to deal with both crises building resilience against them is therefore crucial in order to save lives and livelihoods but the question is what do we what can we do to achieve this just recovery well many people's perceptions of the environment have changed for instance some people have resorted to walking, cycling, staying at home during the lockdown and this had made many people to spend more time in agriculture which is good because our country is an agriculture country and it's also good for the environment well due to unexpected consequences like lockdown of industries, transport networks and businesses brought due to COVID-19 it has brought a sudden dropping carbon emissions like we can see and there's clean air there's cleaner air there's clear water there are blue skies and animals are watering in some cities and on the other hand there are a few changes for example the pandemic has brought widespread job losses and threatened livelihoods of millions so there's an economic activities toll but the other is simply quite the discussion around climate change which is more difficult right now that for example such events like the COP26 and climate conferences and the climate strikes are going digital but well the response towards coronavirus has shown the difference that communities can make when they look out for each other it has given us a lot of that rapid action could also be taken on climate change the same way it is taken but the same way it is taken as for COVID-19 the measures to enhance climate resilience can be part of the COVID-19 responses the same way those to contain and deal with the pandemic can be used to build community resilience climate change impacts well however the massive disruption of our routines caused by the pandemic has come with an opportunity for us to move to a more sustainable lifestyle but this will only happen if our leaders are willing to take concrete and decisive steps to encourage positive environmental changes enacted during the lockdown well we can see that the promotion of climate resilient practices will ensure food security and adjust recovery as well as reduce our communities vulnerabilities in these times well and I wanted to share that these times of change during COVID-19 have led to the introduction of lasting habits and most of them are good for the environment therefore if we need to take action we can but why haven't we taken this action for climate we need real action and this time none just talks and I also wanted to end with a quote from President Macron where he said that people have come to an understanding that no one hesitates to make very profound brutal choices when it's a matter of saving lives it's the same for climate risk this is the moment they have to be strong and both to take radical steps to protect the environment like I said earlier it's up to our government to make sure that these measures put during lockdown are are are continued and they are they like our governments make these uh measures taken more concrete and also make decisive steps to encourage these practices even after the lockdown thank you thank you so much for that Hilda uh the youth that have shown in leadership over the last few months and it's now our collective responsibility to really scale up our organising and to make sure that climate justice is a key part of recovery so thank you for that and I'm now just going to take a couple of minutes to invite everyone on the call to take action and next slide please okay thanks as you can see on this slide we've put together a creative visual action with a make your own face mask guide so the idea is that you can put whatever message you find most relevant as part of calling for a just recovery we really want to celebrate the diversity of people taking action for a just recovery around the world and all the partners that we have working together on this moment and as you know of course with offline mobilisations being a bit more limited these days and they once were uh visual digital actions that have really come into their own as an important part of um campaigning around this moment so I just wanted to highlight that action for you I think there's a couple of options that you can take one of them is to uh go on Facebook and pick a photo frame which is which will be a mask that you can choose and the second is to make your own mask literally and if you go to 350.org forward slash G20 there is a link on there if you scroll down a bit there's a hyperlink in blue um that will take you to the specific guide but yeah the G20 pages are our landing page for all our actions so do do have a look um and and see if you'd like to take part in in any of that um of course the more people that do it the better because visibility is everything around this time um so thank you so much I believe that our next speaker is going to be um Tasneem Essop from Climate Action Network International so thank you so much Tasneem um take it away thanks Agi and thank you very much to 350 for for inviting me to be part of this webinar and it's a real privilege to follow from all our great speakers before me um so it's very clear that we are living through historical times what this COVID pandemic has laid bare of course is centuries actually of the ugliness of systems like colonialism right through to capitalism and neoliberalism the inequalities that we are now witnessing on a daily basis on all our TV screens of course while we're locked down is has been made visible and as Sharon and Liddy and others have said these are crisis inequality poverty injustice injustices that we're witnessing is not something that emerges out of this pandemic but has been there for centuries decades before and I think we are all talking about this moment now being a real transformational moment and if we look at the solutions to the the COVID crisis the climate crisis to inequality to racial uh injustice all of these struggles are in fact the same struggle we have to fundamentally address the systems that have spawned um all of these injustices so I would like to suggest that in our just recovery the important aspect of that would be the just part that in fact we have to ensure in any recovery that is being planned for that we put justice right at the center of that recovery we need to recognize therefore that black people of color indigenous peoples they have been on the front lines of these crises and especially in developing countries it is those uh mainly poor working class communities and peoples who have borne the worst burdens of the climate impact and so that is the fundamental injustice that we we have to address as well and of course we all know that they are least responsible for the causes of climate change so the connections as we are seeing and recognizing now between these different crises is therefore incumbent on us to actually ensure that any recovery that has been planned for takes care of all of these uh challenges and injustices so we have been working of course uh and supporting 350 in the work on the just recovery as can international we recognize that um this particular opportunity for radical transformation has to be pushed by peoples themselves we are not going to get the radical transformation from those who have vested interest in the existing systems so please have no doubts that for example the fossil fuel industry will suddenly say we're giving up our um interest in the sector and suddenly transform which is going to be up to all of us and as we are discussing on this call an immediate opportunity of course is the G20 meeting coming up in two weeks the decisions being made by the G20 potentially and remember that the G20 represents 85 percent of the world's GDP they also represent 80 percent of our global emissions and the decisions that they potentially will be making at their meeting will absolutely have an impact on the world economy and obviously those decisions could potentially lock in what we have right now the various systems that have driven the injustices that we've witnessed today so it is incumbent on us to present our alternatives uh that's spelled out in the just recovery principles we have to demonstrate our power as well when we do so so we have to of course um in that recognize that there are a few things that it looks as if we're reaching consensus about already in this webinar so the call for debt relief debt cancellation and in line with what Lily says is an important call that can international is also supporting and working for the we believe that all of our the economic recovery packages and public investments to reboot the economy and achieve transformational change should lead with creating millions of green jobs which is absolutely realistic it has to contribute to local and regional strengthening of people live initiatives and also will help power a just transition for our workers and Sharon has already spoken to the initiatives that they're driving around that that we support as can international there are a few things that we think in this push for a just recovery and for finance ministers to consider uh are the following one we have to look at any forward-looking investments meeting environmental and social standards that would have to of course include building resilient infrastructure and when we focus on infrastructure it is clear that you know these kind of investments in big projects especially energy project is something that we could look at in terms of reviewing because these crises and especially the the covid crisis has shown us that in fact localization is far more effective and impactful than these big centralized infrastructure that we're doing and that social infrastructure that builds the resilience into the future is critical so for example public transport investing in public transport looking at investing in efficient um settlements so our human settlements especially in developing countries has shown us that you cannot achieve um social distancing and that also relates in fact when we have climate uh extreme weather inventories those kinds of settlements that are mostly uh devastated and so how we redesign our settlements the kind of housing that we build etc we have to invest of course in health and access to health access to education all of these uh investments in social infrastructure and social services are fundamental also to addressing the resilience needed for dealing with climate impacts and the IPCC 1.5 report is very clear about this you know being poor and suffering from inequality makes makes people more vulnerable to climate impacts it doesn't allow for the adaptive capacity and so addressing poverty and inequality is fundamental to dealing with climate change but it's also fundamental to dealing with any of these kinds of um multiple crises that we are witnessing today we have to ensure that equity and the just transition is at the center of any um recovery and there has to be investment in that we have to look at our food systems for example and we have to invest in um healthy and sustainable food systems that is based on the principles of agroecology and all of these solutions that we are looking at for investment are solutions that address multiple crises uh that we are talking about we obviously also have to ensure that we do not invest in harmful industries so we have to stop fossil fuel subsidies for example and the G20 has made this decision I think almost 10 years ago and has never implemented the decision so we have to stop fossil fuel subsidies we have to um look at tax reform and I think Sharon has already addressed that matter and we support that we have to address the kinds of um investment in the future of you know energy sectors of course shifting away from investment in the fossil fuel industry and towards renewable energy is the critical investment that we need to look I think that we have you know before the pandemic we have had all these solutions uh in the climate movement that's been presented for many many years and with the 1.5 degree report it's very clear that the scientists are saying we need radical transformation and we have not we've been putting pressure on our governments to do that and this is not born any any fruit and I think we have to understand that this moment therefore is a make or break moment if we do not get this right if we do not ensure that our governments and our finance ministers who are making these key decisions in the G20 for example if we do not get them to completely shift away from business as usual but shift away from locking in the existing economic systems and social systems as well as the political systems actually I mean we've learned very hard lessons that political leadership really matters and when you have autocratic right-wing leaders in many of these countries there's no no political will to address um the needs of poor marginalized and vulnerable communities in particular so I think all of us it seems we recognize that this is an important moment we have witnessed just the impact of these multiple crises especially on poor working class communities and especially black and people of color and indigenous communities and so it is beholden as of of course on all of us to put as much pressure at national levels for just recovery do not let the the veil of a pandemic shroud these unaccountable and untransparent attempts by governments to just lock in an unjust system we have to push them at national levels we have to push them at global levels and the last point I'd like to make is you know of course this pandemic has also allowed many of the governments who have real responsibilities in terms of the climate the Paris Agreement to step back and well we're not going to deliver our obligations we busy with a crisis at the moment a health crisis and we should not allow that because as we have recognized these crises are all interlinked and we have to push our government to continue their climate commitments that they obliged to fulfill and especially developed countries who are still obliged to fulfill their financial obligations because that climate finance together with the debt relief debt cancellation etc is important for us to also build resilience in the developing countries specifically and also especially for poor and working class communities elsewhere so we cannot let them take their foot off the pedal when it comes to their climate responsibilities as well this is all part of climate justice and justice as a whole in the world that we're fighting for so I think again thank you very much 354 inviting me we have huge challenge on our hands but as history has shown us it is with people's power when we are all united when we are all standing in solidarity that we can achieve the kind of world that we're fighting for thank you thank you so much for that Tasneem a really inspiring and rallying call to action there and a good reminder that this July is such an important moment and one that can have an impact on our future for decades if not centuries to come combined with the the other moments that will happen this year so thank you so much we're running a little bit over but we're going to answer some questions now that have come through so if you can hang on for a few more minutes please do and while we run through some questions and Nico if we could just go to the final slide that would be amazing thanks thank you so much and while we feel these questions please do feel free to check out 350.org forward slash g20 to see all the activities that we're proposing for this July and please do sign the petition spread the word and make your own face mask I know I'm going to definitely be doing some of those myself shortly great so we've had some questions the first question that we've got is for Liddy and the question is how can we achieve debt relief Liddy would you be able to answer that question yes from our experience so there has been some debt relief that has happened across the years I must say they were far from what we actually demanded of demanded the creditors to give or the lenders to give but even the the small amounts of that relief that they actually conceded two or three times already in the last decade and a half two decades we really had to campaign hard for I mean it's it and I think those of you who are part of the climate justice movement part of 350 part of some other movement working on climate we know this very well that there is nothing that the system and these governments and these corporations will give us unless we fight hard and that's the way we can get the debt relief there's many lenders that are involved there's what they call the public lenders or official lenders there's the private lenders there are many arenas where we need to raise these issues in the UN in the G20 the IMF and World Bank and other international financial institutions and they are all coordinating with each other there's the Paris Club so-called these are the bilateral lenders there's the London Club these are the private lenders so these are different avenues and arenas where we need to raise our voices but it's not going to happen unless we have big citizens movements to demand this debt cancellation actually is the word that we prefer because relief has been that relief has been interpreted in so many different ways including in ways where it wasn't actually relief for the borrowers but relief for the creditors it's really different schemes where the big institutions have made sure that the creditors get their payments and that's how they have interpreted that relief how to help the country's pay rather than how ease the burden of these countries so yes we need campaigning and we need huge movements to make it happen thank you so much for that Liddy and we've got another question that's come in and it is what opportunities do you think that could come up along with COVID-19 so I suppose what what kinds of opportunities have been opened for campaigning and action during this time and Hilda would you would you like to have a cracker answering that or and then and then Arun Abha perhaps you'd like to go ahead Arun Abha sure thanks again I think it's a very important question and I don't like the sort of glip talk of you know every crisis and opportunity I think every crisis is a crisis and the pandemic is a horrible humanitarian crisis nevertheless what it does do is it focus our attention on what we call tail end risks what on paper seems like far out in the future unlikely to happen but when it happens it hits us and hits the most vulnerable so hard that an unravels years sometimes decades of progress in human development now if we have to learn any lesson from this it is how do we become more resilient against future shocks whether they're pandemics public health shocks vector-borne diseases or other kinds of climate and environmental related shocks water stress heat stress agricultural output coming down and so forth here's a clear proposal and since we are discussing the G20 I put it forward you know Liddy also talked about this in some ways all the World Bank IDA countries will get a total of about 130 million dollars in terms of pandemic insurance bonds payout women alone is going to get 141 million dollars from its pandemic insurance this is the inequity we're dealing with in the world today now the kinds of shocks that our countries face are going to be different a small island state or a coastal community in a large country will have one kind of you know climate related shocks a landlocked country will have another kind the principle of risk pooling allows you to pool and lower the or bend or the flatten the curve of climate related risks I propose that we create something called a global risk pooling reserve fund you can you can finance it through an additional allocation of the IMF's special drawing right so no additional public money needs to go out right now the pooled risk will lower the risk profiles while creating a much larger insurance cushion for the world's most vulnerable communities there's one thing we have to learn from this crisis it is that we have to think of the weakest links in our society the most vulnerable and prepare not just hope for the best but prepare for the worst thank you so much for that um comprehensive answer that's fantastic we've sadly run out of time for today um but it's been really great to hear from all of our speakers so thank you so much to everyone who joined us today and thank you everyone who's uh tuned in to to listen and participate and ask questions and it's been really really fantastic so just to um just to wrap up this July is such an important moment um for us for us all and it's one that will have an impact on us for for our future for decades if not centuries to come um the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors will meet to discuss recovery plans while the EU heads of state will host their first physical summit since the pandemic hit to agree on how to spend public funds to build back the economy and that's our money that's public public funds world leaders have failed us and they failed us on climate change they failed us in saying in losing so many lives to a broken health system and they failed us in preventing police violence and institutional racism so this really is a moment that we need to seize and um take action together and that's why that's why we're on this call today um and it's been really really fantastic so thank you so much for for joining us and uh look forward to seeing you taking action um online and otherwise uh and and hearing um all your messages on social media and more uh so thank you very much thank you very much thank you very much bye bye