The emergency is social and environmental

In a column that we are publishing, Cécile Duflot, Managing Director of Oxfam France, explains that the coronavirus crisis reveals glaring inequalities in the world. It wants a profound change in public policies and the strategies of private actors.

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This column - as well as other points of view of experts, thinkers, artists or sportsmen - is published within the framework of special days “  After the Covid-19, a new world?  », On May 8, 9 and 10, on RFI's radio and digital antennas.

We would like to see it as a unique opportunity, a window opening towards unlimited horizons to start all over again.

After the avalanche of tragedies that this health crisis continues to provoke, it is - excited and feverish at the same time - that we begin to wonder if we want a return to the world of yesteryear, or if it is time to rethink it.

But already the machine is racing, seizing up, and seems to overtake us. Without a structural reflection having time to settle.

This crisis has highlighted a number of inequalities and vulnerabilities, and deserves to be given height.

In France and in the world, the health situation has acted as a magnifying mirror on the few ramparts which benefit the most fragile: precarious jobs, disparities between men and women, low income, unequal access to essential services (water, health , etc.) (1), cramped accommodation (where it exists) making containment difficult, food insecurity, etc. On our territory, while the lines stretch in front of food banks, 50 million people will be threatened by hunger in West Africa in the coming months. An even more worrying situation for the displaced populations, estimated at 5 million in the Sahel region and in the Central African Republic.

Overall, Oxfam has calculated that 500 million people are directly at risk of poverty because of the economic crisis caused by Covid-19. Or a decline of 10 to 30 years in the fight against poverty.

As for the causes, there is no doubt about the responsibility of human activities in this crisis. Hypermobility, deforestation, urbanization, excessive extension of monocultures, intensification of exchanges of people and goods ... And all this has contributed to a profound imbalance in our environment.

Today, it is unthinkable to sit idly by or look elsewhere. The emergency is indeed social and environmental.

Behind the scenes, business resumes. Unfortunately, what we start to see the next day looks bitterly the day before, even worse.

20 billion euros in public aid has just been allocated by France to its companies, without being asked for any social or environmental commitment. Only to show goodwill and exemplarity, despite repeated alerts from the scientific community and civil society.

While they are signing a platform calling for putting "the environment at the heart of the economic recovery", all of the signatory French companies actually have a carbon footprint at least 8 times that of France. Total nonsense!

On a European scale, faced with the debts of the states which are widening, billions of euros have been released for the rescue plans of the economy, but without sufficient guarantees that this will serve the citizens and our planet. At the international level, without canceling the debts for 2020 of the poorest countries (2), poverty, hunger and inequality will explode.

Ultimately, we would have liked to be contradicted by the first presidential announcements on reinvention, renewal. But it is not.

However, there is no need to reinvent the powder, the solutions already exist and are known to our leaders.

The economy, if it is vital, can only be a means to achieve the objectives that we have set ourselves: social progress, environmental awareness, and solidarity between peoples.

You might say big declarations, but behind them, common sense.

In the short term , we ask that the payment of dividends, bonuses and share buybacks be suspended, or paid on condition that the companies have not benefited from public aid.

We ask that not a single euro of public aid come to support companies whose subsidiaries are domiciled in tax havens.

We ask that the State integrate the climate into its recovery plan, by conditioning its aid to compliance with the Paris Agreement.

We demand the cancellation of the debt of African countries for 2020 and their flattening out in the long term.

And it is in the long term that we must focus today:

• by reconsidering the social importance of the trades (in particular for the benefit of women)
• ensuring that future medical treatment is accessible to everyone
• by putting in place a system where the highest incomes and the wealthiest contribute more
• ensuring that rich countries take their fair share in international solidarity efforts
• by maintaining and strengthening our climate ambition and helping the most vulnerable countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change
• by promoting investments in “green” sectors, and by supporting populations in the ecological transition
• by forcing public and private financial institutions to divest from fossil fuels for the benefit of renewables
• prioritizing local farming systems, supporting peasant farming and agroecological approaches

The efforts of self-denial that this will require of all of us are immense.

But the time has come for things to change. So let us now impose a power relationship on society to demand an in-depth transformation of our public policies and the strategies of private actors. The worst is never certain.

(1) According to Oxfam, half of the world's population does not have access to basic health care. It is concentrated in low-income countries, which do not normally have sufficient resources to meet basic needs.

(2) It is however the most rapid and immediate action to give access to 400 billion dollars of liquidity to the poorest countries to face the health, economic and social consequences of Covid-19. 40 % of low-income countries face the risk of over-indebtedness.

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