Global commissions led by IIPP Director urge a new economic paradigm to address the planetary crisis

• G20 countries are responsible for 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The should therefore be responsible for at least 80% of the investment needed to tackle the climate crisis, says the Group of Experts to the G20 Taskforce on a Global Mobilization Against Climate Change (co-chaired by Professor Mariana Mazzucato and Dr Vera Songwe).
• The group argues that governments can still achieve the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C, but only if all G20 states commit to new economic development pathways that are compatible with this goal. This means they should urgently: (1) adopt green industrial strategies oriented around Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs); (2) reshape financial policies and institutions to unlock access to affordable green finance – with higher-income countries that have historically contributed the most to GHG emissions shouldering more responsibility; and (3) ensure equitable global governance of both green industrial strategy and green finance to ensure that all countries can benefit from green growth.
• Urgent action is equally needed to tackle the global water crisis, the final report of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water  (also co-chaired by Professor Mazzucato) argues. Weak economics focused on reactively fixing markets instead of shaping economies combined with destructive land use practices, the persistent mismanagement of water resources, and the worsening climate crisis have put the global water cycle under unprecedented stress. The report recommends that governments (1) value and govern the hydrological cycle as a global common good, (2) adopt five critical water missions to develop a more joined-up, all-of-government response, and (3) embed conditionalities in water rights aligned with the five missions.

Our global response to the climate, biodiversity, and water crises demands an economy-wide and all-of-government approach, argue two new reports released this month by global commissions co-chaired by IIPP Director Professor Mariana Mazzucato: the final report of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water and the final report of the Group of Experts to the G20 Taskforce on the Global Mobilization Against Climate Change (TF-CLIMA).

“We are stuck in a siloed and sectoral mindset,” argues Professor Mazzucato. “The triple planetary crisis is not just the remit of ministries of environment – solving it requires strategic coordination between ministries of energy, agriculture, transportation, economy, and finance (to name a few). At the same time, the solutions we need to tackle these environmental challenges will not just come from one sector alone – we must change how we eat, sleep, build, and travel. We must change how we produce and consume across the economy.”

Professor Mazzucato travelled to Washington, DC October 22-24, 2024, to launch both reports at the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings and G20 meetings, in front of the world’s finance and climate ministers. They come just in time for the UN’s biodiversity conference COP 16 in Cali, Colombia (21 Oct – 1 Nov) and climate conference COP 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan (11 – 22 Nov).

“A Green and Just Planet: A Framework for governing Industrial and Financial Policy for a 1.5ºC World” is the final report of the Group of Experts co-chaired by Professor Mazzucato and Vera Songwe (Founder and Chair of Liquidity and Sustainability Facility), who received a mandate from President Lula of Brazil to bring forward bold recommendations to inform the G20’s Taskforce on the Global Mobilization Against Climate Change (TF-CLIMA).

The report builds on IIPP’s pathbreaking work advancing a new challenge-driven approach to green industrial strategy, including through collaboration with the governments of Brazil, Barbados, the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa.

It argues that all G20 countries can and should adopt new development pathways that reconcile ambitious climate action with economic growth, through green industrial strategies and green financial policies supported by new global governance structures that prioritise equity.

Professor Mazzucato and Dr. Songwe presented the report at the G20 Joint Meeting of Finance, Climate & Environment, and Foreign Affairs Ministers and Governors of Central Banks. Led by Fernando Haddad (Brazil’s Minister of Finance), Marina Silva (Brazil’s Minister of Environment), and Roberto Campos Neto (Brazil’s Central Bank Governor) this was the final meeting of the G20 TF CLIMA, which brought finance and climate ministers and central bank governors together for the first time to discuss their shared responsibility for tackling the climate crisis. The meeting included remarks from several ministers, including Dion George (South Africa’s Minister of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries), Nirmala Sitharaman (India’s Minister of Finance), Rachel Reeves (UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Ed Miliband (UK’s Secretary for Energy Security and Net Zero), Carlos Cuerpo (Spain’s Minister of Finance), and Jim Chalmers (Australia’s Treasurer), to name a few.

Building on IIPP’s report with the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs the role of mission-oriented public development banks in tackling the SDGs, the Co-Chairs also engaged with Amina Mohammed (the UN’s Deputy Secretary General), who endorsed the report, citing its ambition and timeliness ahead of the 4^th International Conference on Financing for Development in Sevilla, Spain in June and July 2025, and the importance of ensuring that it informs the renewal of Nationally Determined Contribution climate targets between COP29 and COP30.

The report adopts a mission-oriented approach to tackle the global water crisis, recommending that governments focus their efforts on five critical mission areas to develop a more joined-up, all-of-government response, namely to (1) Launch a new revolution in food systems, (2) Conserve and restore natural habitats critical to protecting green water, (3) Establish a circular water economy, (4) Enable a clean-energy and AI-rich era with much lower water intensity, and (4) Ensure no child need die from unsafe water by 2030.

President Shanmugaratnam and Professor Mazzucato presented the report at one of the eight official high-level events at the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings entitled “Financing Water Security: Increasing Investments to Close the Gap Between Water Demand and Supply”. The event also featured opening remarks from Axel van Trotsenburg (Managing Director of the World Bank) and a panel consisting of Vera Daves (Minister of Finance of Angola) and Pavel Isa Contreras (Minister of Economy of the Dominican Republic), among others.

The IIPP team is now taking both reports to Cali, Colombia to present them at the biodiversity COP 16. Water, climate, and biodiversity are deeply interlinked, and therefore require a systemic, collective, and economy-wide response. These reports will also influence ongoing discussions in the leadup to Brazil’s COP30 presidency and South Africa’s G20 presidency.

Further reading

• “The Economics of Water: Valuing the Hydrological Cycle as a Global Common Good” – final report of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water
• “The Water-Security Crisis” – oped in Project Syndicate by Mariana Mazzucato, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Johan Rockstrom, and Tharman Shanmugaratnam
• “What the G20 Can Do for Green Growth” – oped in Project Syndicate by Mariana Mazzucato and Vera Songwe
• “A Green and Just Planet: A Framework for governing Industrial and Financial Policy for a 1.5ºC World” – final report of the Group of Experts to the G20 Taskforce on a Global Mobilization Against Climate Change