A Global Green New Deal

The world faces a crisis far more serious than even this worldwide pandemic: the climate crisis. Climate breakdown may be a more gradual emergency but it will be far more deadly and disruptive than even Coronavirus. How do we ensure our response to COVID-19 also tackles the climate crisis?  How do we embed international solidarity into a global green recovery? How do we construct a global just transition to a sustainable world?

Some of the answers may lie in this pandemic. The disruption it has caused in capitalist circuits of production has already reduced carbon emissions, ended air pollution, and shown the potential for states to enact bold policies and find unprecedented financial resources. It has also weakened the key actors and drivers of climate change: Big Oil.  Various institutions are proposing a Global Green New Deal as the best way to respond to the economic recession that will result from the pandemic. But there is also a danger that the virus will delay climate action, that stimulus packages will be corruptly siphoned off by extractive industries, that the rush to return to normal will solidify systems of injustice. Business lobbyists are already using this moment to weaken environmental legislation.

This webinar will explore the opportunities and challenges of this moment for a transformational shift towards climate justice.  It will most of all explore what a truly global climate justice programme would look like – one that centers the needs of those who will suffer the most from consequences of climate change  – and who are also those disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

Panellists

• Richard Kozul-Wright, Director of the Division on Globalization and Development Strategies at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, author of Transforming Economies: Making Industrial Policy Work for Growth, Jobs and Development
   
• Karin Nansen, chair of Friends of the Earth International, founding member of REDES – Friends of the Earth Uruguay
   
• Sandra van Niekerk, Researcher for the One Million Climate Jobs campaign, South Africa
   
• Asad Rehman, Executive Director of War on Want. Co-organiser of Global Green New Deal Campaign

4pm CET, 13 May 2020

The webinar is organised by TNI and co-sponsored by Focus on the Global South, Alternative Information and Development Centre  (South Africa), the Institute for Political Ecology (Croatia), Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the Transform! Europe Network.