GEC at the SDG Festival of Global Action
Watch our panel discussion on a new eco-social contract and an interview with our special advisor Kumi Naidoo
We're delighted to report on the Green Economy Coalition's co-hosted panel discussion at the SDG Global Festival of Action, March 25-26th 2021, as well as an interview with our special advisor Kumi Naidoo which was featured as part of the programme.
Deep dive on new eco-social contract
Our panel, co-hosted with the UN Research Institute for Social Development, took the form of a deep dive discussion on the possibility of a new eco-social contract for people and planet.
The full extent of the suffering caused by COVID-19, the Inequality Virus, is still emerging, but the pandemic has exposed the scale of global inequalities, and it is likely to exacerbate them. Rising unemployment, unequal access to social protection measures and the erosion of democracies globally bear testimony to a social contract in tatters. Declining trust in societal institutions, government, business, NGOs and media is rooted in this growing inequity. And human exploitation of nature has decimated biodiversity and ecosystem health.
We need a green and just recovery from the pandemic. A new eco-social contract is vital in delivering on the SDGs. It should be grounded in broad participation, dialogue and consensus building; constructed incrementally, sector by sector and issue by issue; and therefore, also nationally and sometimes locally specific.
Our panel explored how this contract might work in practice, and what civil society can do right now to help push for change.
- Kumi Naidoo, Global Ambassador for Africans Rising and Special Advisor to the Green Economy Coalition
- Isabell Kempf, Senior Research Coordinator, UNRISD
- Mueda Nawanat, Senior Fellow, OHCHR
- Najma Mohamed, Director of Policy, Green Economy Coalition
- Paul Ladd, Director, UNRISD
- Rhoda Boateng, Programme Coordinator, Climate & Just Transition, ITUC-Africa
