Anis Chowdhury

2022 has been a year of great uncertainty when it seemed the world perilously reached the brink of self-destruction – be it human-induced climate change or military conflict.

The spectre of “stagflation” threatens the world once again. This time, the risk is the direct consequence of political provocations and war.

The planet is already 1.1 degrees Celsius warmer than in pre-industrial times. July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded in 142 years. Despite the pandemic slowdown, 2020 has been the hottest year so far, ending the warmest decade (2011-2020) ever.

Quickly enabling greater and more affordable production of and access to Covid-19 medical needs are urgently needed in the South.

Addressing global warming requires cutting carbon emissions by almost half by 2030! For the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), emissions must fall by 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, instead of the 2.7 degrees Celsius now expected.

The current climate mitigation plans will result in a catastrophic 2.7 degrees Celsius rise in world temperature. USD 1.6-3.8 trillion is needed annually to avoid global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“The outlook for LDCs is grim.”—the latest United Nations (UN) assessment of the prospects for the least developed countries (LDCs) notes recent setbacks without finding any silver lining on the horizon.

Vaccine costs have pushed many developing countries to the end of the Covid-19 inoculation queue, with most low-income nations not even lining up. What’s worse, less vaccinated poor nations cannot afford fiscal efforts to provide relief or stimulate recovery—let alone achieve Agenda 2030.

Instead of a health system striving to provide universal healthcare, a fragmented, profit-driven market “non-system” has emerged in recent decades. The 1980s’ neo-liberal counter-revolution against the historic 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration is responsible for this.

Hopes for an inclusive global economic recovery are fast fading. As rich countries have done little to ensure poor countries’ access to vaccines and fiscal resources, North-South “fault lines” will certainly widen.

At least 85 poor countries will not have significant access to coronavirus vaccines before 2023. Unfortunately, a year’s delay will cause an estimated 2.5 million avoidable deaths in low and lower-middle income countries.

Refusal to temporarily suspend several World Trade Organization (WTO) intellectual property (IP) provisions to enable much faster and broader progress in addressing the Covid-19 pandemic should be grounds for International Criminal Court prosecution for genocide.

The World Bank has been leading other multilateral development banks (MDBs) and international financial institutions to press developing country governments to “de-risk” infrastructure and other private, especially foreign investments.

The United Nations’ renamed World Social Report 2020 (WSR 2020) argued that income inequality is rising in most developed countries, and some middle-income countries, including China, the world’s fastest growing economy in recent decades.

The World Bank has finally given up defending its controversial, but influential Doing Business Report (DBR). In August, the Bank “paused” publication of the DBR due to a “number of irregularities” after its much criticised ranking system was exposed as fraudulent.

The World Bank leadership must urgently abandon its “Maximising Finance for Development” (MFD) hoax. Instead, it should resume its traditional multilateral development bank role of mobilising funds at minimal cost to finance developing countries.

As the epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic shifts from China to the developed West, all too many rich countries are acting selfishly, invoking the “national interest”, by banning exports of vital medical supplies.

Much recent unrest, such as the “yellow-vest” protests in France and the US “Abolish the Super-Rich” campaign, is not against inequality per se, but reflects perceptions of changing inequalities. Most citizens resent inequalities when it is not only unacceptably high, but also rising.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), all dominated by rich countries, have long promoted trade liberalisation as a “win-win” solution for “all people—rich and poor—and all countries—developed and developing countries”, arguing that “the gains are large enough to enable compensation to be provided to the losers”.

Over the last four decades, growing concentration of market power in the hands of oligopolies, if not monopolies, has been greatly enabled by ostensibly neoliberal reforms, worsening wealth concentration and gross inequalities in the world.