Live Blog

THANK YOU for your participation at the Global Solutions Summit 2021! We welcomed more than 10.000 viewers from over 160 countries! Most sessions from the Summit Livestream will be uploaded as videos on demand at www.global-solutions-initiative.org soon. The next Global Solutions Summit will take place on March 28-29, 2022. Stay safe and healthy. Your Global Solutions Team

The OECD is developing a dashboard of indicators that track recovery in four key dimensions – strength, resilience, inclusiveness and sustainability – the OECD Secretary General Angel Gurría said today on the Global Solutions Summit. This approach is very close to our Recoupling Dashboardhe which  is a country-specific research tool to measure the wellbeing of societies beyond GDP and illustrates the correlation of economic prosperity, social prosperity and environmental sustainability.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mario Draghi, Italy’s Prime Minister and President of the G20, kicked off the second day of the Global Solutions Summit by making a strong case for multilateralism and global cooperation in tackling global issues including the coronavirus pandemic and climate change. “The pandemic shows that all of the attempts to fight it at the national level will simply not be sufficient, it cannot be sufficient in order to overcome the Covid-19 crisis,” Merkel said. “We need to ensure access in all countries – access to vaccines, to medication, to tests, and this is true for the poorest countries in the world.” The German chancellor said she took pride in the fact that Europe is exporting vaccines to other nations, and warned that incentives should not be reduced for vaccine research and development in preparing for future health threats. Draghi said that at the beginning of the pandemic, “multilateralism was weak … because there wasn’t enough of it.” “Multilateralism is now bouncing back,” he said, stressing that Italy, which holds the G20 presidency this year, is “determined to lead a change in the paradigm – the world means the world, not a collection of individual states.” Draghi said the European Union “has shown its sovereignty in the vaccine campaign,” and called for “a joined sovereignty in Europe in many fields besides the health area.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mario Draghi, Italian Prime Minister and President of the G20, are set to open the second conference day on Friday, which will also feature UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Tune in a 1 pm.

Isabel Schnabel, executive board member of the European Central Bank (ECB), said that while central bankers were traditionally reluctant to deal with climate change, more interaction with the general public has massively spurred the ECB’s focus on the issue over the past few years. “We have to ask ourselves whether we are doing what we could and should do with respect to climate change, so this is not just about asset purchases, or not just about lending operations – we have to look at everything and this actually starts with fundamental thinking about economic models,” Schnabel said, adding that the current models are “quite deficient” in measuring transition risk.

We have a situation where doing the right thing, investing heavily in net zero transition is penalized … and on the other hand doing nothing or doing the minimum possible is rewarded,” Robert McGarvey, Co-Founder, Rethinking Capita said on the panel "Constrained by Accounting." He was adding that in this way, “accounting is aligned against climate action and I believe against public interest."

The Global Solutions Summit kicked off on Thursday as a “rallying cry” for fundamental system change and comes at a “historical watershed” created by the coronavirus pandemic, Global Solutions Initiative President Dennis Snower said.

We are thrilled to present the Global Solutions Journal "Summit Edition 2021". It is centered around global policy challenges such as vaccinating the global population against COVID, addressing climate change and the loss of biodiversity, stemming the growth of poverty and wealth gaps, and finding a global consensus on digital governance. This edition provides a bridge between visions, recommendations and action. You will find articles from academics and authors working on implementing ideas in the political, economic, business, and civil society sectors.

The above video stream is only a small part of the Global Solutions Summit 2021. To get the full dose of this world-class event you can still register. You will be able to access our digital Summit platform and meet outstanding speakers and participants. Just click here

We will extensively report on social media about the Global Solution Summit 2021. With live post from sessions, short videos and photos. The hashtag we are using is #GSS2021. Please #RT 🙂