As ever, it’s the poor that are suffering the most in the COVID-19 pandemic. As if we needed any reminding at all, what COVID-19 has brought starkly to the fore is the huge inequalities between rich and poor countries and between the rich and poor within all countries. And if COVID-19 doesn’t shake us out of our complacency and failure to act decisively on these grotesque inequalities, what will?

If COVID-19 is hitting the poor the most, it’s swiping all of us, rich and poor. And more than ever, the rich should know they can’t survive, let alone prosper, sustainably and safely unless our debilitating inequalities are significantly reduced. The speed and sweep of the COVID pandemic across the globe, reaching rich countries from poor and vice-versa, and the threat of more and more severe global pandemics, and the global climate crisis that creates the conditions for this make it startling clear – that wherever we are, if some in the globe are struck by a debilitating virus or climate disaster we are all of us, somehow or the other, sooner or later, adversely affected. And, over time, the cumulative effects are sure to hit us hard, wherever we are. No barrier is going to protect any of us against that.

We’re in the same global boat. And we have no choice – ultimately, we can swim to a better life or we can just sink together.
If COVID-19 points us to the need for global cooperation, it has also served to impel us in the opposite direction: to accelerate the tendency that emerged before it towards national insularity, trade protectionism, the undermining of multilateral institutions, the refusal to cooperate on climate change, and other forms of the fractionalisation and factionalisation of the global community. And if COVID-19 has considerably advanced the use of digital technologies in our work, private lives and much else and is accelerating the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) with all its potential for human advances, it could also leave the poor and marginalised even further behind and could considerably widen the gulf between the haves and have-nots.

We’re at a major cusp in world history. And we need to take the right steps for all our sakes.

And let’s be clear. We brought COVID-19 upon ourselves. We refused to heed the many warning signs. Now it’s here to stay possibly for quite some time. And the signs are that there are likely to be more and more devastating pandemics.

Unless we work much more effectively together within and between countries, we are not going to make sustainable progress. As challenging as it is, we need in all countries for governments, parliaments, business, labour, scientists and other experts, and other sectors of civil society to work together within a consensual framework – without giving up our respective identities and roles – to tackle the pandemic effectively, grow our economies and create jobs. We need a new social compact for these new times.

And at a global level – despite the almost impossible challenges in this – to work together to ensure we boost global job-creating economic growth which also, over time, significantly reduces inequalities within and between countries.

Just what other way forward is there?

This means that the multilateral institutions – the UN, WTO, WHO, World Bank, IMF, ILO and others – have to be far more effective in seeking to forge at least minimal global consensus and, more importantly, action to reduce protectionism and encourage international trade; ensure that any COVID-19 vaccine is distributed fairly across the globe; strengthen health systems; decisively tackle the climate crisis; and ensure that the leaps in digital technologies and the 4IR reduce the digital divides. All this and more has to be done – but not, please, to take us back to the pre-COVID past, but towards a more just and equitable world order in which the poor and marginalised in the developing world and elsewhere benefit significantly more, inequalities are significantly reduced, and the multilateral institutions are transformed to be more representative of the global community, with the greater inclusion of developing countries.

In May, the World Bank President, David Malpass said: “The scope and speed with which the COVID 19 pandemic and economic shutdowns have devastated the poor around the world are unprecedented in modern times” and that “current estimates show that 60 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty in 2020” and that this is likely to increase.
According to the UN, the largest concentration of the “new poor” is likely to be in the Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Women and female-headed households are affected the most. Job losses are significantly in labour intensive service sectors which are mainly in the developing world. Workers with disabilities are also disproportionately losing their jobs because of COVID-19 job losses, a Global Disability Inclusion Survey has found.

A World Bank Vice President, Ceyla Pazarbasioglu said: “When the (COVID19) pandemic struck, many emerging and developing economies were already vulnerable due to record-high debt levels and much weaker growth. Combined with structural bottlenecks, this will amplify the long-term damage of deep recessions associated with the pandemic.”

On Africa Day – 25 May – our President and the current AU Chairperson, Cyril Ramaphosa said: “We call on developed countries, multilateral institutions and the donor community to provide vulnerable countries across the world, especially in our continent, with the necessary support in the form (of) diagnostic and therapeutic medical supplies as well as necessary financial support to sustain the livelihoods of vulnerable people. We repeat our call for a comprehensive, robust economic stimulus package for Africa that includes debt relief and other support measures for the continent’s immediate humanitarian needs and necessary economic recovery.”

But calls for international support and debt relief have also to be accompanied by politicians and other elites in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world ensuring that we are more responsive to the needs of the poor in our countries; use our internal resources more productively; drastically reduce corruption; fully democratise; provide maximum space for ordinary people to have a greater say in their lives; and do much else, on our own, through our own potential, to improve the well-being of our societies and not always rely on external support to rescue us (though COVID-19 has made this support indispensable for now).

COVID-19 has certainly drastically reduced the prospects of achieving the SDGs. Yet COVID-19 has made universal access to healthcare and social protection more necessary than ever. The ILO in its “Social protection responses to the COVID19 pandemic in developing countries” said that “COVID19 has served as a wake-up call in alerting the global community to the urgency of accelerating progress in building social protection systems.” And “policy makers in developing countries should seek to design emergency crisis responses with a longer-term perspective in mind to strengthen social protection systems and decent work, including by supporting transition from the informal to the formal economy.”

Tackling COVID-19 cannot be separated from the need to decisively address the climate crisis. Humanity’s relationship with the natural world has been destabilised, and COVID-19 is not just the latest zoonotic disease, but a forewarning of an even greater threat facing humanity – that of irreversible climate change that could make large parts of the planet uninhabitable. Climate scientists suggest that we may have as little as a decade to avert a catastrophe rendering much of the planet uninhabitable. Again, it will be the developing world and the poor in particular who will suffer the biggest consequences.

Of course, climate change will hit us all, even in the developed world, but there too it’s the poor who will suffer unfairly. Just one example. The impact of air pollution disproportionately affects the poor as they reside more in areas that are heavily exposed to air pollution. A recent study in the US found that a small increase in long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) leads to a large increase in the COVID-19 death rate, and suggests that had climate change interventions been in place, people in areas with pollution problems would have a higher chance of recovering from COVID-19. If climate change action is not prioritised it will be more difficult to cope with the lasting impacts of COVID-19.
COVID-19 has posed other challenges for dealing with climate change. There has, for example, been a significant spike in the use of plastic and other hazardous waste because of the drastic increase in the use of gloves, hand sanitisers, masks and disposable shopping bags. We need to act on this front.

Clearly, we need to build greater resilience to fight pandemics as well as prepare for future health and climate change emergencies. There has also been an increasing call for a “Global Green New Deal”. Public investment to enable a better defence against future emergencies should be the basis of a domestic “new deal”. But there needs to be even a minimum measure of global consensus on a “new deal” if we are to succeed. Surely COVID-19 should give a new impetus to international negotiations to reach agreements on tackling climate change far more effectively?

To ensure global economic recovery from COVID-19 there also needs to be greater global cooperation on the digital technology revolution. It’s unacceptable that about half the world’s population has no access to the internet. Despite huge advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, the use of Big Data and other technologies of the 4IR, the world is floundering as the COVID-19 onslaught sweeps us over. Why could all these phenomenal advances in technology not help us to better anticipate the COVID-19 Horror and respond to it more effectively? Is it because these technologies have served primarily the narrow material interests of elites and not adequately enough the interests of humanity generally?

In introducing “The Road Map for Digital Cooperation” in June, the UN General Secretary, António Guterres, warned that the “danger of digital fragmentation is increasing, exacerbated by geopolitical divides, technological competition and polarization.”

He said that COVID-19 has shown that digital technology “is central to almost every aspect of the response to the pandemic, from vaccine research to online learning models, e-commerce and tools that are enabling hundreds of millions of people to work and study from home.”

He emphasised that “the digital divide is now a matter of life and death for people who are unable to access essential health care information. It is threatening to become the new face of inequality, reinforcing the social and economic disadvantages suffered by women and girls, people with disabilities and minorities of all kinds.”

And he stressed: “The Internet is a powerful and essential global public good that requires the highest possible level of international cooperation….We urgently need global vision and leadership for our digitally interdependent world.”

To ensure a sustainable economic and other recovery from COVID-19 global digital cooperation is vital.

Parliaments also have a crucial role to play in our recovery from the COVID-19 onslaught. And the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and the IMF (PN) could do more. The seminars it has organised and the bulletins it has produced on tackling the COVID-19 crisis have been very helpful. But, with all our limitations, can we not do more?

Even before COVID, in the PN Board discussion paper on strengthening the PN it was noted: “With changes in the global political and economic terrain, and persistent global inequality, the PN needs to play an increasingly more important role… We should retain the PN as a network of individual MPs, but seek to be more activist in orientation without becoming an activist representative organization of individual MPs or parliaments”.

It was noted that: “We also need to strengthen our relationship with civil society organizations as part of our approach to being more effective in our role of empowering MPs to exercise more effective oversight of WB and IMF projects. We could also partner with certain NGOs on specific projects or programmes and build greater trust between the PN and NGOs.”

The paper also observed that the organization is “called, correctly, the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and IMF. It is not the Parliamentary Network of the World Bank and IMF. The PN is meant to empower MPs to hold the World Bank and IMF to account.”

The discussion paper observed too that “the stronger the PN is, the more seriously is it likely to be taken by the WB and IMF, and other multi-lateral institutions, as well as other global parliamentary organisations, civil society and other relevant stakeholders.”

The paper emphasized the need to build strong PN Chapters to ensure the organisation is more effective and to strengthen democracy within the PN and encourage a more active membership.

COVID-19 and the lockdown restrictions in particular have made the implementation of some of these proposals more difficult, but others easier to implement through digital technologies. Anyway, we need to do what is do-able and we certainly need to be more active.

Not just the PN, but all of us, in whatever sphere we are, wherever we are in the world.

COVID-19 has hit us all like nothing else. The message is simple and stark: cooperate for a better world or suffer the consequences! Let’s take heed. And, more important, act decisively.

This article is an extract taken from the Parliamentary Network publication ‘Just Transitions’. You can download a pdf version of the full document here.