Source: Government of South Africa
With the state of global inequality set to worsen, South Africa’s Group of Twenty (G20) Presidency has launched a historic initiative that will deliver a report on global inequality.
“South Africa’s G20 Presidency is proud to launch an initiative that will target this issue of global wealth inequality – a first for the G20 – and offer a practical way forward.
“We are honored to host a group of the world’s most respected economic experts, led by Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz, to produce a report that will be presented to G20 Leaders,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday.
The President commissioned an Extraordinary Committee to produce a report on global inequality amid macroeconomic fears that global wealth and income inequality, which was already very high, is set to sharply accelerate.
Recent analysis shows that the world’s richest 1% have increased their wealth by more than US$33.9 trillion in real terms, since 2015 – more than enough to eliminate annual global poverty 22 times over.
New shocks to global trade patterns, international financing and critical minerals flows, along with the intensification of problems created by sovereign debt overhang and imbalanced tax regimes, are creating uncertainties for policymakers, consumers and firms, and look likely to deepen the divide.
According to The Presidency, inequality of this scale poses a serious systemic risk to global economic, social and political progress.
The six independent experts are Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz (Nobel Economics Prize Laureate, USA); Dr Adriana E. Abdenur (Brazil); Ms Winnie Byanyima (Uganda); Professor Jayati Ghosh (India); Professor Imraan Valodia (South Africa), and Dr Wanga Zembe-Mkabile (South Africa).
The experts will report on the state of wealth and income inequality, their impacts on growth, poverty and multilateralism, and present a menu of effective solutions for leaders.
“People across the world know how extreme inequality undermines their dignity and chance for a better future. They saw the brutal unfairness of vaccine apartheid, where millions in the Global South were denied the vaccines to save them.
“They see the impacts of rising food and energy prices, debt and trade wars, all driving this growing gap between the rich and the rest of the world, undermining progress and economic dynamism. A new oligarchy in our global economy is becoming apparent,” the President said.
Stiglitz said inequality has widened to extremes that threaten democracy itself and should be a concern of all.
“…The profound rise in the discontents of mismanaged globalisation, which in many places has contributed to this growth of inequality, is also evident.
“Inequality was always a choice – and G20 nations have the power to choose a different path on a range of economic and social policies. I am grateful to President Ramaphosa for placing inequality as central to the G20 agenda.
“The burgeoning body of scholarship on the causes of, and ways of reducing inequality, can help us to redress the great divide that has grown enormously in recent years. Our task must now be to translate the evidence and public’s palpable anger at the great divide into sound, practical and transformative policy proposals for G20 leaders,” he said.
Professor Ghosh, of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said policymakers the world over are asking for evidence-based, practicable strategies to reduce inequality – and a new playbook to deal with the fractured and financialised 21st century political economy.
“It is a great privilege to have an opportunity to address this, provided by South Africa’s G20 Presidency. We must move away from depending on economic orthodoxies that generate business-as-usual strategies rather than grappling with complex and inconvenient truths.
“The longer-term trend of worsening inequality reflects ongoing processes accentuated by shocks, from the 2008 financial crisis to the 2020 pandemic. We now see a “perfect storm” of shocks, from tariffs being weaponised to push for deregulation, to the slashing of life-saving aid, to uncertainty affecting private investment and employment — all in the context of worsening climate change,” Ghosh said.
These further increase the wealth of the rich and aggravate poverty and insecurity among the majority.
“This makes our work all the more urgent,” she emphasised.
Further details of experts are as follows:
- Professor Joseph Stiglitz (USA): a Nobel Laureate in Economics; university professor at Columbia University and chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute.
- Dr Adriana E. Abdenur (Brazil): a Brazilian social scientist, former Special Advisor in International Affairs in the office of President Lula of Brazil; co-founder of the Brazilian think tank, Plataforma CIPÓ, and current co-President of the Global Fund for a New Economy (GFNE).
- Ms Winnie Byanyima (Uganda): Executive Director of UNAIDS and an Under-Secretary General of the United Nations; Convenor of the Global Council on Inequality, AIDS and Pandemics, and co-founder and co-chair of the People’s Medicines Alliance.
- Professor Jayati Ghosh (India): Professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Co-Chair: International Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation.
- Professor Imraan Valodia (South Africa): Professor of Economics; Pro Vice-Chancellor: Climate, Sustainability and Inequality, and Director of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of the Witwatersrand.
- Dr Wanga Zembe-Mkabile (South Africa): Senior Specialist Scientist in the Health Systems Research Unit of the South African Medical Research Council, and an Extraordinary Professor at the UWC School of Public Health.
The G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Wealth Inequality is a special project located in the G20 Sherpa’s Office in the Department of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa. – SAnews.gov.za