A drastic rise in hunger over a 1000000000 informal workers facing unemployment and up to 100000000 people pushed into extreme poverty those are the latest grim projections of coronas worldwide impact were told have a killer virus that spread across the globe in days livelihoods the world over that have been shot down but is there an opportunity here can those livelihoods be restored in a more equitable in a more sustainable manner just as an e. U. Summit bargains over the Recovery Plan the United Nations is staging a conference thats talking about Building Back better our title a green and better recovery for all fonts 24 and the w. T. V. Join up for the debate welcome and it is a pleasure to introduce our guests. Starting with the finance minister of ghana ken a for iata faso chemin is a leader all sir for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the United Nations lecture at the french Political Science institute spoke your books include the anthropocene and the Global Environmental crisis thanks for joining us and its a pleasure to welcome sinitta not hind she is an environmental activist and director of the center for science and environment in delhi india before we take a closer look at the pandemics toll in the global south wed like to ask the 3 of you to tell us and really in a one sentence if you would is green recover even still an option in the wake of corona sinitta if you would go 1st place. Its possible but its a challenge thats recognized and the challenge the fact is there is well people have been affected desperate for a lot but theres also a possibility because we we can invest in this city and future as well or the world in the one thats the opportunity that should excite just that years and years to build for the cleanup tina. And minister of for a better your answer still possible i think if we can. Sort of plan ahead. And. Economic thought mutuality and whether if your power and resources is not what drives. We have easily about a 100 trillion dollars of assets under management and the question is really an occasion and it deployment i suppose a lot of it is possible if we are ready for it they should. Move up and i felt architecture. Thank you and foss was a man you wrote not too long ago that in the long run the covert crisis will be a disaster for the climate so do you think Green Recovery is even still an option i think it is still possible but we need to admit that this is not the direction that we taking at the moment and i think this is an opportunity that we would be stupid and syringe wist. Not the direction were taking at the moment is. When you take a look at the developing world in particular countries like india where the pandemic is still raging where there was 1st that brutal lockdown that came all of a sudden and left millions of people are caught off guard now as the economy reopens you see that desperate rush to get things back to where they were before its a report by france 24 correspondent jackie gallop. Every morning these men assembled on a street in new delhi looking for somebody to hire them for the deed to do jobs like painting repairing or copying tree. It got me. To go if theyre lucky they could earn up to 80 hrs a day but lately luck hasnt been on the site. Again and i dont know about that. But. Beyond that without it got to him i would have got him the lockdown is he to the Construction Industry and its men like me who was swapping the price for me to. Come in. Like millions before him if it was to his considering returning to his village where he could live off the land but the exodus of such might include this has plunged indias industrial sectors into crisis like this Garment Manufacturing humanity on the outskirts of town. At the peak of policies and me used to have it on 550 people would be good looking with 144 people on together with manufacturers struggling to find work because many states have introduced noise but temporarily dissolved neighbor rights to ensure the industry is still. As to what course they did in that they used to love 40. 00 a share now we have lost that mchugh they have to look at least 10 of us would never know but those who see on. Not on the banking only the rights. That our. Government has been able to. Handle with no fixed income no savings and a disrupted marketplace indias millions of migrant and daily wage workers face an uncertain future as is the countrys economy which in the absence of the migrant labor force is expected to grow at its lowest base in 11 ias so we see in the report how both the formal and the Informal Sector are being directly impacted again it comes back to melindas initial question of. What kind of recovery when you see that report. So and so whats important for us to recognize. Thats. What 19 hit the poorest but was hit twice once because they almost fundable to the infection and doom because of the loss of life. But this was something very interesting and important that is happening to the novel the fact is still now we have had massive migration from of villages to cities because well its because of activity and distress the growing list the planet change you have climbing people leaving their homes in desperation and thats why we had a massive exodus out to believe just. What what weve done for the 1st time is actually sent people that its an. Im not seeing today theyre full of the possibility and this is where the saying there is a possibility do things at once if the invest in louis commies build the resilience of people invest in National Discourse management and who are living yes you can actually teach the conditions so that people can leave. At home they can live in the villages but betty thats one issue the fact is to now we have had these approaches globalization systems in which the world has built in economy by discounting both the bar and the environment which is why you have these a. Conditions in our cities because Everybody Needs to compete with china everywhere else in the world where you want to keep the hospital today with the extra disappear a book for the 1st time in india there is a discussion about how gabler pipes need to be because Industry Needs that the. Even have to give i read used to believe they even have to be promising to believe not that we need least cost of production so is there an opportunity for the one talk about a different model throughout moving that we have something some shanab root sheep up salit not doing well being let i dont know but this is the net the question is today and thats what in the seat being out in the media at the height of lockdown back in april can afford out to you wrote a blog a diary if you will for the Financial Times which you describe driving through dane your life driving through the city of across the road where the School Children the women frying donuts the newspaper sellers the beggars where are you selling everything from dog chains to gum has gone up also experienced this reverse migration that soon needs a neuron was talking about. You know i think our president. Sort of saw the situation very clearly and right from the beginning and you know he asked that the ministry to launch a 100000000000. 00 preparedness program. When to lock down. Private we were ready for that and working of the faith based organizations were able to then supply food were able to give free electricity free water just to make sure that peoples livelihoods are protected and also protection but they work at those i think we took that quite well and that therefore sort of money situation we didnt have that sort of huge reverse migration where there is at the track and we were able to keep body and soul together in a craft. Store and then the issue of the testing and get into the environment to make sure the people felt safe and well it came with a stream caused by that mantra was you know we know we are competent to bring the economy back to life but we are not able to bring people back to life and so lets do all that we can so i think if you look at africa we have done the most test and he said thats really reasonably low. But its a stretch to treasury and therefore remark in and out to work of our finances its orders required for the world but i can stay. That truly we need to move the continent from the economics of our commodity resource into a certain kind of mutuality that really. We have enough resources to go around and whether we can find the type of leadership at this time to do our image rowdy between whom i am is a mutualistic between currently those who have the resources for example that there is in the countries a been able to print money and our 11. 00 trillion dollars to be able to the economic and other to create is not available to most people in africa. Theres a 100. 00 trillion dollars of assets under management forming at some levels what is the new tectonic shift that is required so that the 3 distribution. In point of. Coming to be in and then save for the future so those are the questions we have in our president has written to a few of the leading president s and im discussions with us on these issues chairman. We want to come back in just a moment to those questions of mutuality and northsouth cooperation but let me just drill a little bit deeper now on the migration issue that sinitta raised she sees a process of reverse migration going on and were certainly seeing that in other places as well recent media reports in the u. S. Show that workers. From latin america and from other countries are saying you know maybe its time to go home we cant make a likelihood in the United States plus regimen youve done a lot of work on migration would you say in fact that that process is a process that in the medium and long term can lead to real changes in the conditions for workers or is it a temporary phenomenon i think it is a possibility of usually thats still too early to tell but what is for sure is that weve observed migration flows that were very different from what we used to have served as an intern or a mansion there was a massive reverse migration from the cities to the countryside that was observed in india and in many developing countries but also in europe if i take it is our of paris for example more than 1000000000 people left the region of paris during the lockdown because they wanted to go to the countryside so that we saw a kind of rural exist in. And thats interesting to see if that will if this is a trend that will continue in the long run then i think its important that many citizens from industrialized countries where also stuck at home and and so important restrictions to their mobility and in a way they failed to descriptions that they had imposed to migrants from developing countries for years and all of a sudden they were down on the west on other countries including in the u. S. In the case of europeans and i think that is something that can also in the long run afaik the relationship and the migration flows and then there is also the issue that migrants were really on the front line during this crisis that they were usually more exposed to the virus that typically the motility rate was much higher amongst migrant population compared to native populations and really was so unimportant array of inequalities in access to have access to Health Facilities thats really a fact that the migrants anybodies is also likely that this might affect the migration flows in the migration policies in the future because we so important and always special the matter and locals with the economy final point and we have the figures at the end of this year the income available for many migrants was also significantly cut which means that the amount of remittances that would they will be able to send back home to their families that were driven below than 500000000000 dollars last year is likely to be reduced significantly this year which will affect the result is available to many families in the global south and we know that a lot of countries a lot of families depend on these remittances for their livelihood all of the circumstances that we are discussing discussing have many young people the world over are worried about their future lets hear now from a few of the youth delegates to the United NationsHigh Level Political Forum that is meeting. This week to talk about accelerating action on Sustainable Development in the context of recovering greener and better are the e. U. And germany i said think that because every measures through a climate just is less and so what concrete actions will your government take to help those affected the most by the climate crisis. How can we ensure that at Green Recovery in the pushkov it 19 era addresses Poverty Alleviation and also offers an opportunity for employment for many unemployed youth especially in the global south. As it affects young people with the rise in unemployment across the world war will be the rule of innovation what should be governments plan in ensuring that in the vision becomes. To change the narrative of how normal would be normal minister for you let me pick up on the last 3 questions that we heard there 1st of all what would you say to those young people who are worried about their generations Educational Opportunities and employment prospects in light of the crisis. I think its a great question and thats what really keeps all of our the wake up nights because im in ghana i think. The your population. Between 18 and 30. Represents 35 to 40 percent of our population and therefore all we do is how do you create an environment in which the appropriate skills to be given and there will be social mobility that is key to any sustaining democracy. So we have since we came into government initiated a Free Education policy for Senior High School and we had brought about 1200000. Kids who otherwise would not have you know high school not going. And that therefore is wired and then sort of the skill set and therefore program in our or celebrated celebration for the little covert issue. We are just putting together a 100000000000 cd with the way quarter of our g. D. P. Programs for stuff like this you know revitalization that we confront or even understand all issue of recovery in a much faster way and so we are quite optimistic that we are dressed in their issue head on and now at least to us with their ingenuity and innovation on our part to find the resources to do that but i think in the past 3 years later the groundwork educated what for which can then flexibly you to be an economy that we the tall order button that the reason for being in government and to give everybody a chance for their god given skills. Minister just a really quick follow up if you would you recently presented the African Development banks. Economic outlook for west africa which has some pretty harsh numbers in terms of the contraction of the economy you said nonetheless you see this as an opportunity to harness africas youth bulge as we call it the fact that they havent africa has an enormous population of young people but the fact is up until now africa hasnt been very good at harnessing that you spots at a high rate of unemployment in many countries for young people is that really going to change in the wake of the crisis. Im doing. But of its family are you know we heard. In which. Like knife and. Inflation 15 percent and you know all the members with were in the wrong direction and weve been able to the rather. And still find. It really good to have never been before and so for me the show is leadership and for African Leadership to be strong i mean thats not us to the way in which we finance the world and thats why people say we need to really confront the issue of the International Financial act because its really not fit what you can have under a trillion dollars. Not a lot of stuff. And then have a fine of them got of about a 100000000000. 00 a year for infrastructure for africa and then we say we can. You know i think it will invite us you know it will too. Raise National Market at the polls when 75 percent and african countries raise money the question then is how do you create. A triple a wrapper around to ensure that we can all will the cup that market rate will we gather enough will be in the final for the world and so yes i think change i thin will leaders are beginning to realize it now most our of our youth or the future by 2050 we are going to be a quarter of the worlds population with most of the youth we need to address and this is no well you know enlightened self interest who went for that type of drug and so im optimistic that the new type of leadership in the continent we can help. Visitors and i would suggest a good list exposed to those young people into a. Minister for iata is this is a moment for people need more governments if thats the case where you are. Are you asking me yes yes absolutely its a paraphrase you need more government but its not just about government to develop. A new compact be to be open in the week between the rich and the poor then i think the minister talked about that and thats really what i mean i can already see my own dogmatists big need to talk the language in big need to invest essentially what you are thinking today is that you have a massive you have a massive opportunity where you have very large numbers of young people who need employment back instead of looking only at night i mean that the but its for almost sector in the urban industrially if you think about employment to different regions of able to where people need to build in a sense of who the economic the the and of the community because i mean we must always remember that what weve 19 is the price of the destruction because they seem to be but we have an equally bleak deception which is border the knocking on our door which is Climate Change and we have seen the impact back on the lives of our founder of the poor in our country so we have to remember and this is