The pandemic has pushed many countries – from the United States to Rwanda – to spend trillions of dollars on short-term measures, including payments to businesses and poor families, to cushion their populations from economic shocks. A fraction of this cash could be used to start a fund offering basic income like cash transfers to the poor, pensions for the elderly and disability, unemployment and child benefits, campaigners said at an online event.”Social protection is absolutely fundamental,” said Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation. “If we have a fund to build those social protection systems for the 55% of the world’s people who have no social protection, and for the 72% who have little or no social protection, then it returns money and jobs to the economy,” she said.

EU plans 120 billion euro economic boost by easing insurance rules

Sep 23, 2021

Olav Jones, deputy director general for Insurance Europe, an industry body, said he welcomed EU acknowledgement of the need to reduce capital requirements, but only a “significant and permanent” cut in capital would allow insurers to increase support for the economy and regain global competitiveness.

Brussels proposed easing the impact of the so-called volatility adjustment, which mitigates the impact of short-term market moves on insurer solvency.

It also wants to make it easier for insurers to benefit from preferential capital treatment worth around 10.5 billion euros from investing in long-term assets to green the economy.

‘We can end the pandemic’, UN chief says in new call for global vaccine plan

Sep 23, 2021

Although more than 5.7 million doses have been administered globally, 73 per cent have been in just 10 countries, and just three per cent of people in Africa have had innoculations.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s plan calls for at least doubling vaccine production to ensure 2.3 billion doses are equitably distributed through the vaccine solidarity initiative, COVAX.

The goal is to reach 40 per cent of people worldwide by the end of this year, and 70 per cent in the first half of 2022, per targets set by WHO.

No climate finance for hydropower: ‘Rivers for Climate’ declaration

Sep 23, 2021

Incentivising and expanding hydroelectric power construction would not only fail to prevent catastrophic climate change, but it would also worsen the climate crisis by exploding methane emissions and diverting scarce climate funds away from meaningful energy and water solutions in a world that is already grappling with severe impacts of climate change, the release said.

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