Humanity is facing a global emergency. Extreme poverty and climate-related disasters are taking the lives of over 40,000 people every single day and severely affecting many millions of others. At the same time, dramatic cutbacks in public spending on social welfare and essential services are making it increasingly difficult for many families to meet their basic needs, even in the richest nations.
This global emergency exists largely because governments have pursued policies over many decades that undermine the ‘sharing economy’ – systems of welfare and redistribution that have been established over many generations to protect the poor and vulnerable. In particular, the international community could do much more to scale up sharing between nations in order to help developing countries meet the basic needs of their citizens and strengthen domestic systems of social protection.
Dealing with the structural causes of the global emergency will require wholesale reform of the world economy on a scale never before attempted. As an immediate response, the international community has the means to mobilise staggering amounts of finance to end poverty-related deaths and needless suffering as a foremost priority. If taken together, the policy recommendations in this report could enable governments to redistribute more than $2.8 trillion within a short number of years, money that could be used to prevent life-threatening deprivation, reverse austerity measures and mitigate the human impacts of climate change.
We already have the institutions, mechanisms and expertise in place to take this crucial first step towards world rehabilitation. What lacks is a sufficient level of public support across the world to overcome the political and commercial barriers to implementing these critical measures. Mobilising world public opinion to strengthen and scale up the ‘global sharing economy’ must therefore be an immediate priority for campaigners and engaged citizens in all countries.
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