Civil Society challenges G20 on inequality and sustainable growth by Australian C20 (‘Civil Society’) Summit 1:18pm 2nd Jun, 2014   June 22, 2014    Representatives of global civil society have called on the G20 to tackle endemic corruption, confront the challenges of climate change and urgently address the social and economic time bomb represented by the world’s unemployed youth.    Meeting in Melbourne, Australia over the weekend to finalise the essential issues civil society wants to see on the G20 agenda when it meets in Brisbane in November, the C20 reaffirmed its belief that economic growth must deliver jobs and reduce poverty and global inequality.    Chair of the C20 Steering Committee Tim Costello said, “Growth without jobs will do little to address the urgent global challenge of extreme and growing inequality. The C20 believes that growth should achieve long-term sustainability, not just wealth for a few.”    The C20 is calling on G20 members to adopt targets for increased employment participation for all groups.    “The importance of decent work is a central element of achieving inclusive sustainable growth. Closing the participation gap for women alone could deliver the G20’s stated growth target,” Mr Costello said.    “The C20’s primary aim is to ensure the most vulnerable in our society do not get left behind in the quest for economic growth. The C20 Summit has identified the key elements to achieving that, in a way that reduces global inequality,” Mr Costello said.    “There was also an overwhelming consensus among the 400 delegates that economic growth cannot be discussed in isolation from climate change.    “Climate change is not a fringe concern. Its impact on communities, including threatening food security, makes it an economic issue regardless of domestic political considerations. Climate change must be a stand-alone issue on the G20 Agenda.”    Policy measures to come out of the Summit aimed at tackling corruption and recognising the need for transparency, included the development of a new focused and measurable G20 Anti-Corruption Plan.    Also needed are public registries required to disclose accurate beneficial ownership information – in open data format – of companies, trusts and other legal structures, to tackle tax avoidance, tax evasion, corruption, money laundering and terrorist financing.    “Good governance includes transparency and accountability to citizens,” said Mr Costello.    The C20 reiterated the importance of taxes being paid where economic activity occurs.    Delegates involved in the C20 Summit included senior representatives of leading NGOs as well as national and international speakers across four policy issues: Inclusive Growth and Employment; Infrastructure; Climate and Sustainability; Governance.    The C20 (‘Civil Society’) Summit held at the University of Melbourne was the first of the lead-in G20 ‘satellite’ conferences, aimed at providing a platform for dialogue between civil society and the political leaders of the G20 countries.    Australian C20 Summit Communique    Preamble    1. The Australian C20 Steering Committee is charged with the responsibility of bringing to the attention of the G20 leaders’ meeting in Brisbane in November 2014, key and pressing concerns of those who comprise civil society in Australia, within the G20, and other world civil society organisations    2. We have led an inclusive policy process for developing focused and relevant policy considerations about the urgent and contemporary economic reform issues of concern to international and Australian civil society, in order to influence the decisions and outcome of the Brisbane G20 Meeting.    3. We are concerned that the global economy remains fragile, extreme and growing inequality remains a feature of many nations, and recovery from the global financial crisis is not guaranteed.    In some parts of our world, many people continue to live in abject poverty. Reducing inequality increases the opportunity for sustained economic growth.    To ensure growth and resilience, we urge G20 leaders to take strong and decisive action to address the structural issues that underpin global economic stability, building the foundations for inclusive and sustainable global economic growth, while addressing climate change as an urgent priority.    4. We welcome the stated commitment of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors to develop comprehensive growth strategies, to achieve strong, sustainable and inclusive growth. The effectiveness of growth strategies should be assessed, by their contribution to reducing inequality and alleviating poverty for all groups in society, especially the most disadvantaged.    5. We believe that growth should achieve long-term sustainability, and should not be at the expense of any sector of the population including women, people with disability, youth, Indigenous Peoples, children, long-term unemployed, low-skilled workers, single parents, LGBTI people and older people. Growth should occur in ways which increase employment opportunities and the self-esteem that valued work brings.    6. We recommend that country growth strategies include decisive action to alleviate poverty through the provision of effective and efficient social services, as well as protections to enable a reasonable standard of living for those outside the formal economy.    We believe that balanced and inclusive growth should result in improved income distribution and be targeted consistently across different industries and sectors together with investment in innovation to improve resource consumption.    7. We call for the G20 to commit to reduced global inequality and to inclusive growth. Expanding universal access to high quality health and education services financed through fair tax systems is key to achieving equitable development outcomes, inclusive growth and sustainability.    8. We recommend country growth strategies be developed across four main policy themes: equity and participation; infrastructure; climate change and resource security; and governance.    Equity and Participation    9. The C20 believes that economic growth should achieve positive social and environmental outcomes, reducing poverty and inequality amongst people as well as protection of the environment.    Growth should create jobs not just wealth for a few. While efficient and effective market based mechanisms can operate beneficially, they need to be acceptable and responsive to the needs of all peoples, fair and environmentally friendly.    10. Creating a fair and just society will require G20 members to establish and build social protections for all citizens, by building and maintaining universal access to effective health, education and welfare systems, encouraging fair and sustainable employment, and establishing and maintaining appropriate labour market laws, regulations and protections.    11. A particularly important and effective means by which G20 members can build the necessary capabilities, resilience and acceptance of market based economic systems is through employment strategies supported by improved linkages between skills acquisition, employment and labour market accessibility to address particularly the increased participation of women and young people.    12. The importance of decent work as articulated by the ILO is a central element of achieving inclusive, sustainable and equitable growth.    13. Closing the participation gap for women alone, could deliver the G20’s stated growth target.    14. We recommend that the G20 commit to inclusive growth as stated in the St Petersburg Declaration by inserting the language of inequality into the framework for strong, sustainable and balanced growth.    15. All G20 policies should take into account their differentiated impact on women and men.    16. We further recommend:    a. the joint Finance and Labour Ministers’ meeting be reinstated as an ongoing part of G20 processes    b. G20 leaders commit to supporting labour institutions and social protections that ensure decent work and inclusive growth outcomes such as collective bargaining, minimum wages, social security and access to health care    c. All G20 members adopt targets for increased employment participation for all groups    d. G20 leaders should develop country action plans on employment, education, training and local job creation with a specific focus on women, people with disability and youth, that are delivered through partnerships between government, the private sector, civil society, labour and Indigenous organisations    e. G20 members should adopt policies that enable equitable access to financial services, to support financial inclusion which drives growth    f. in encouraging efficient and effective markets the G20 urgently adopt a common approach to addressing child labour in public procurement    g. noting that over three billion people live on less than $2.50 per day, sustainable and inclusive growth must be driven through good faith participation in the UN led process to reach common agreement on the post-2015 development framework by the end of 2015    h. recognition of the substantial contribution to the formal economy of unpaid work and volunteering.    Infrastructure    17. We recognise the importance of infrastructure in lifting economic growth and improving the standard of living for current and future generations. Sustainable and inclusive economic growth is possible only when there is ongoing investment in both economic and social infrastructure. Infrastructure investment should include public projects such as housing, education, communications, internet access and healthcare, in addition to those dedicated to trade, energy or transport. The G20 should increase public expenditure on health infrastructure services and access to medicines. Universal access to healthcare is essential to ensure the maintenance of strong economic growth.    18. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are often proposed as a favourable and preferential solution to any shortfall in a government’s ability to fund public infrastructure. PPPs are not always the most economically efficient means of financing public infrastructure and may have negative impacts on public access. A strong civil society is a vital safeguard against negative impacts of infrastructure projects. The G20 should demand PPP arrangements are transparent to enable independent monitoring. Their suitability depends on the particular circumstances of individual countries, governments and projects. The Brisbane Action Plan should not favour PPPs over publically financed infrastructure and should consider financing arrangements on a ‘value-for-money’ approach that is context specific and considers costs across the project lifecycle.    19. To ensure that the benefits of economic and social infrastructure are equitable and sustainable, the G20 should develop common investment standards for best practice with regard to community consultation, project planning, governance, management, monitoring and evaluation, and safeguards, throughout its membership and within multilateral development banks. Infrastructure project decisions should involve the community through upstream participatory project identification and design, downstream robust safeguards around planning, construction and operation, and recourse mechanisms.    Climate Change and Resource Security    20. There can be no sustained economic growth without governments attending to the urgent ramifications of climate change. Regardless of domestic political considerations, climate change must be a stand-alone issue on the G20 agenda.    21. We expect G20 leaders to provide momentum to delivering an ambitious global climate agreement at the 2015 UNFCCC Climate Summit in Paris, by including a climate finance roadmap by April 2015 to help developing countries reduce emissions and manage the unavoidable impacts of climate change, and to implement mitigation strategies which will ensure that sustainable economic growth is not affected by rapid changes in the world’s climate.    22. We expect G20 leaders to commit to measures that will immediately end government specific financial support for fossil fuels and that G20 leaders will remove impediments to efficient and effective investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency measures.    23. To establish the most efficient market for all sources of energy, the G20 should work together to put a price on carbon, and announce a firm timetable for implementation.    24. Resource security remains a critical issue for the international community as the world’s population grows. Demographic changes mean expanding middle classes will consume and demand increasing access to goods and services, placing pressure on existing, scarce and non-renewable resources.    25. Food security and in particular lack of access to food is a significant issue for the global community and particularly for developing nations, impacting negatively on their economic growth and resilience.    We encourage G20 leaders to re-balance investments in agriculture so as to support sustainable small-scale farming as a way of boosting employment and food security for the poorest and most marginal by improving access to community savings schemes, market price information, business education and access to finance, as well as removing biofuel subsidies, establishing capped and well-governed water markets, limiting the usage of human-edible food for animal feed and ensuring transparency in the negotiation of trade agreements.    26. We call on G20 leaders to encourage global participation in the development and implementation of global sustainable development goals for all nations, not just for lower income nations.    27. Economic growth will be undermined by an inadequate response to changes in the world’s climate and an ineffective approach to transforming a carbon-reliant global economy. The mitigation of climate change and the creation of a stable and efficient business environment to encourage long-term investment in renewable energy and an end to fossil fuel subsidies are urgently required.    Climate change presents significant global challenges to the achievement of sustainable, inclusive, strong and balanced growth.    Governance    28. We welcome the G20’s commitment to good governance as underpinning capacity for sustainable growth and ensuring economic resilience and call for the development of a new focused and measurable G20 Anti-Corruption Action Plan. Good governance includes transparency and accountability to citizens.    29. We encourage all G20 members to ratify and fully implement the UN Convention Against Corruption and the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.    G20 members must commit to greater consistency and enforcement in foreign bribery offences, and enhanced cooperation, including for equity, when G20 members enter into settlements of foreign bribery prosecutions. Comprehensive, loophole-free whistle-blower protection rules must be adopted in both the private and public sectors.    30. We call for the establishment of public registries which are required to disclose accurate beneficial ownership information in open data format of companies, trusts and other legal structures to tackle tax avoidance, tax evasion, corruption, money laundering and terrorist financing. Taxes should be paid where economic activity occurs. Due diligence and ‘know your customer’ policies for financial and corporate service advisers should be implemented and enforced.    31. We urge the G20 to commit to an inclusive BEPS process (base erosion and profit shifting) with more substantive regional consultations, giving due consideration to issues and concerns of developing countries.    We call for enhanced transparency measures in all sectors to address tax evasion and avoidance through the establishment of annual public country by country reporting by companies of number of employees, subsidiaries, profit and loss, taxes on profits, assets and public subsidies received. Oil, gas and mining companies should be required to publish payments made to governments on a country-by-country and project-by-project basis.    32. The G20 should ensure that the new global standard and modalities for automatic exchange of information between tax authorities do not establish unjustified or unnecessary barriers for developing countries to participate and benefit from global economic growth. G20 nations must provide capacity building assistance to ensure equal participation.    33. G20 members should release data and statistics used to inform the G20 working groups as open data where legally possible and include open data requirements within G20 policy recommendations.    The Ongoing Role of Civil Society    34. Civil society has an important role to play in translating the G20’s language and architecture into a meaningful narrative by giving a voice to citizens affected by its decisions. Strong civil society input improves the quality of policy settings in the G20’s overall inclusive economic growth narrative.    Civil society is recognised globally as an important building block for democratic participation and economic development. Civil society includes a diversity of opinion and action, giving rise to alternative views and unique propositions.    A strong civil society perspective can act as protection against volatility in times of crisis, promoting equality of outcomes in the global reform agenda. The G20 as a group represents a vast body politic, with the majority of global production, trade and wealth contained within its membership.    It is important that civil society is at the table to help ensure that the G20 acts in accordance with good governance, upholding international law and standards in its decision-making.    35. We welcome civil society’s inclusion as a permanent engagement group within the G20 believing that the inclusion of civil society input adds legitimacy to the G20. We look forward to working with a Turkey C20 Steering Committee in the promotion of an inclusive, sustainable, strong and balanced global growth agenda which contributes to ongoing global economic and community resilience.
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