In his address at the G20 summit, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a climate “disaster.” Perhaps, with all the new evidence on climate change, the word disaster now seems appropriate. What was most attention grabbing was the secretary general’s diagnosis of why the world is here in the first place: “dangerous levels of mistrust” among the G20 bloc, and between high-, middle-, and low-income countries, including emerging economies. He urged for greater ambition and action, noting, “The most important objective of this G20 Summit must be to re-establish trust—by tackling the main sources of mistrust—rooted in injustices, inequalities, and geo-political divides.”
In recent years, CIC has focused on exactly these linkages—climate, inequality, and the loss of credibility in the multilateral system as promises of building back better rang hollow.