T20

The COVID-19 pandemic has led many countries to initiate unprecedented economic recovery packages. G20 policy makers tackling the health crisis, which is far from over, have also been encouraged to prioritise strategies which help to mitigate another looming crisis of climate change. Among the policy interventions that support climate change mitigation, promoting investments in labour intensive green infrastructure, establishing a private financing catalysing facility, and designing ambitious carbon pricing schemes are found to boost economic recovery in the short and medium-term.

Catalysing the G20’s competitive advantage on global climate action, this policy brief proposes: 1. To swiftly act to fill the existing vacuum on coordination in the global governance architecture imperative to align the legal and policy regimes on climate and trade. Coordination is the G20’s remit and imperative for systemic global scale action, as demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The G20 should control climate change by mobilizing nature-based solutions to:

Agricultural production is both strongly affected by climate change and a major contributor to climate change, with agriculture and land-use change accounting for about one fifth of total global greenhouse gas emissions – more than for transport or industrial uses. Agricultural production benefits from substantial government support, costing at least US$ 640 billion per year worldwide. Past and current support have an impact on greenhouse gas emissions by influencing the composition and location of output, and production practices.

This brief elaborates on the development of sustainable agriculture in smart cities, addressing the challenges related to increasing demand for protein-rich food due to intense urbanisation. It considers development of the appropriate technologies and optimised infrastructure required for the massive uptake of smart urban farming and simultaneously enabling circular economy mechanisms for recycling waste into value assets.

Digital technologies are indispensable for achieving sustainable development goals and reducing carbon emissions in many sectors. Yet, computer systems themselves have an immense energy requirement for their countless devices, data centres, applications and global networks. With COVID-19, the shift to digital in living, learning and earning has raised the spectre of digital harms and brought us closer to the time when digitalisation will become an increasing social and climate hazard.

We are living in a dynamic and changing world, one that requires youth and young people to be critically informed and prepared to address a range of global sustainability challenges. This policy brief calls for the establishment of a G20 Commission on Youth Education for Sustainable Development to identify the support needed to accelerate the integration of ICT-enabled education for sustainable development, and to provide guidance on the (re-) formation of national policies and strategies to increase youth voice and agency vis-à-vis sustainability at local and national levels.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the relationship between the market economy, state and society in almost every country worldwide. While the economy paused and literally shut down in many countries during the first wave of the pandemic, the state and civil society have gained new significance in protecting people from the ravages of the coronavirus. This shift has affected the public’s perception of the role of markets, government and society in response to the worldwide shock.

The increased use of remote working will not completely fade away after the defeat of COVID-19. This structural change in production presents numerous challenges, of which the unequal distribution of housing conditions across individuals is of the utmost importance, as it creates new sources of inequality both in current earnings distribution (pay differences across workers who would be equally productive under the same working conditions) and in terms of career opportunities.

Globally, the majority of education systems are operating in a climate marked by recurrent school closure and reopening cycles for the second consecutive academic year. This threatens sustainable recovery. Mass education disruption has individual- and institutional-level effects. There are negative consequences for individual life opportunities which are heightened for marginalized groups; and for macro-economic and societal development at the country level.

This proposed policy brief argues the case and provides examples and policy recommendations for comprehensive, multisectoral and integrated data, monitoring and evaluation systems to enable the implementation of multisectoral policies for early childhood development (ECD) and early childhood education and care (ECEC) to support young children, their families and communities.1 There is evidence that countries with more advanced information systems are better prepared to meet the challenges of uncertainty arising from local and global crises (Amirthalingam et al. 2012; Anderson et al.

Young people can be the drivers of inclusive transformation. Nonetheless, with low levels of financial literacy and even lower employment opportunities, they are faced with severe challenges. Young people and women must be encouraged to seize the opportunities of the digital age and the circular economy to actively participate in the financial sector. A financially aware and inclusive culture, which ensures access to financial products and services at both the local and the international level, must be promoted, leveraging the advantages of digitalisation.