We can afford to reverse poverty and climate breakdown. What we can't afford is the alternative

[Judi Lynn]

Kevin Watkins
Our global finance system is failing to rise to the challenges we face. It’s time it was reimagined – and grounded in our shared humanity

Mon 24 Jan 2022 03.15 EST



“The peoples of the Earth,” Henry Morgenthau said, “are inseparably linked by a deep underlying community of purpose.”

In July 1944, Morgenthau, the US Treasury secretary, was closing the Bretton Woods conference with a reflection on extreme nationalism and the failures of cooperation that had led to war. Cautioning against the pursuit of national interest through “the plan-less, senseless rivalry that divided us”, he outlined an accord for new institutions grounded in an appeal to shared humanity.

Reading Morgenthau’s speech today is a jolting reminder of how a generation of political leaders sought to remake the world. The institutional architecture – the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and what became the World Trade Organization – that emerged from Bretton Woods may have been deeply flawed. But this was an attempt to underpin through practical financial and monetary cooperation the human rights and freedoms envisaged in the UN charter.

Today we need institutions equipped to rise to the great challenges posed by Covid-19, poverty and the climate crisis. Yet political leaders gripped by vaccine nationalism, climate nationalism and economic nationalism are manifestly lacking the “community of purpose” their citizens and the world need in this moment of crisis.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/24/we-can-afford-to-reverse-poverty-and-climate-breakdown-what-we-cant-afford-is-the-alternative