{"text":[[{"start":14.24,"text":"The writers are the president of Brazil, president of South Africa and prime minister of Spain"}],[{"start":20.67,"text":"As we write, vital COP climate change talks are being held in Belém, Brazil. Soon the G20 Leaders’ Summit takes place for the first time on African soil in Johannesburg. In an era of volatility, such summits offer a path to progress for the world."}],[{"start":39.870000000000005,"text":"The stakes could not be higher. Families on every continent find it harder to make ends meet, communities across the globe face drought, flood and forest fires, not as news but as the new normal, while young people are denied real economic opportunities. Democracies are under threat the world over."}],[{"start":62.31,"text":"Our responsibility is to provide the leadership that these extraordinary times call for. But it is also to challenge the old way of doing things with a new multilateralism which puts people’s needs at the centre of the international agenda."}],[{"start":79.24000000000001,"text":"The Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, launched last year under the G20’s Brazilian presidency, is a concrete example of how states can co-operate to eradicate one of the most extreme, cruel forms of inequality: access to adequate safe and nutritious food. As is the Sevilla Platform for Action, launched in June at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) which is bringing governments together to help deliver tangible progress to finance our future. "}],[{"start":112.73000000000002,"text":"Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and a team of experts recently delivered the G20’s first-ever report on global inequality based on extensive global evidence and inputs, and the experience of countries from every corner of our planet. It concluded that we face an inequality emergency, just as we face a climate one."}],[{"start":135.93,"text":"High levels of inequality lie at the root of our economic, political, societal and environmental crises. The report shows that inequality not only undermines economic performance but threatens democracy itself. Too much wealth and power is in the hands of too few — as monopolists reign over entire industries, including much of the media and the 21st-century town square of social media. Artificial intelligence, even with all its potential benefits, risks deepening these inequalities still further."}],[{"start":172.58,"text":"Between 2000 and 2024, the top 1 per cent has captured 41 cents of every dollar of wealth generated — while just 1 cent has been shared by the bottom half of humanity. It should alarm us all that we will see our first trillionaires within years, while close to half of humanity still lives in poverty. At the same time, it is clearer than ever that the climate emergency is a crisis of inequality. "}],[{"start":202.73000000000002,"text":"Such statistics must breathe urgency into the Johannesburg and Belém gatherings. Extreme inequality is a systemic risk to every economy. Yet it is one that we can solve together, and it is in our shared interest to do so."}],[{"start":220.36,"text":"A first step is to better equip policymakers and the public to understand and address inequality. In 1988, governments established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to rigorously assess the evidence that would support action to tackle the climate emergency. Today, a similar global effort is required to address the inequality emergency. "}],[{"start":245.54000000000002,"text":"The three of us support the creation of an International Panel on Inequality, as proposed in the report — and we will foster a coalition of governments to champion and deliver it. This should be the go-to global body providing policymakers, the private sector and the public with authoritative assessments on inequality."}],[{"start":268.27000000000004,"text":"We must also rewrite international economic rules and reimagine multilateral co-operation on the basis of the values of sovereignty and solidarity. This means new rules to address challenges from climate change and environmental degradation to debt distress, trade fragmentation and fair taxation. All require enlightened co-operation. None is served by narrow unilateralism. "}],[{"start":296.40000000000003,"text":"Moreover, there is a tremendous opportunity, on the green transition for example, for countries to work together in new ways. Redesigning intellectual property rules to better respond to crises is necessary to avert the kind of vaccine apartheid seen during the pandemic. FfD4 reignited the flame of co-operation for sustainable development and showed how countries can collaborate anew, for example to reform tax rules and the global debt architecture."}],[{"start":328.19000000000005,"text":"Extreme levels of inequality are by no means inevitable. They are a policy choice. We can choose differently. Ending it is a generational challenge that we must meet. We have made it our mission to place the issue at the centre of the world’s agenda, beginning with the creation of an International Panel on Inequality. That would be an era-defining legacy."}],[{"start":360.9200000000001,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1763689152_2343.mp3"}