World leaders and innovators have called for a green global recovery plan which will power the restart of the economy and accelerate progress towards the targets of the Paris Agreement and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“The closest comparison to what I think we need is a green Marshall Plan,” said Brune Poirson, the Secretary of State attached to the Minister of Ecological and Solidary Transition in France, said at a virtual event organised by Future Investment Initiative Institute in Saudi Arabia.
“I think we need a Marshall Plan of the 21st century,” Poirson added, referring to the US reconstruction plan which helped rescue western Europe from the economic devastation of World War II.
According to Poirson, the current crisis looks more like the post-war situation of 1945 than the milder recessions of 2008 and the early 1970s.
Urgent action is needed to return the global economy to growth and put it on more sustainable foundations, speakers at the FII-I’s virtual conference agreed.
The world’s collective failure to preserve natural resources has contributed to the current pandemic, celebrated British environmentalist Dame Jane Goodall said.
“[Scientists] have been predicting a pandemic like this for so long now. It’s because of our disrespect for the environment and animals that this has come about.”
Opening the virtual event, which had the theme “Don’t Forget Our Planet!”, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor of the Public Investment Fund and Chairman of the FII Institute, argued that “collaboration between the public and private sectors is essential in driving a sustainable recovery plan.”
More than 10,000 registrants from over 100 countries viewed the event live from around the world.
The conference was the second in a series of virtual events from the Future Investment Initiative Institute, ahead of the landmark FII 2020 conference which will take place in Riyadh in October.
In the run-up to its flagship conference, the FII Institute is mobilising some of the world’s brightest minds and most influential leaders to define that plan, holding events and publishing reports that aim to help reshape the future of humanity.
Organised by the FII Institute, the fourth edition of the Future Investment Initiative (FII) will take place with a “Neo-Renaissance” theme on October 28-29, 2020, in Riyadh
