GENEVA (AN) — Political leaders and heads of finance, NGOs and international organizations called for a greener global economy, arguing the world can thrive without a purely profit-oriented growth mindset.
As the Swiss sustainable finance initiative drew to a close on Thursday after four days of talks among 1,500 participants, the focus turned to ways of overcoming roadblocks to mobilizing finance for the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs.
"We need to go beyond productivity and take into consideration the deepest values that we place in society to think about what is most essential," Sandrine Dixson-Declève, co-president of the Club of Rome, advised the "Building Bridges" summit.
The world must "shift from the over-financialization of the current economy into an economy that clearly thinks through the way in which we grow for people and for planet and for prosperity – not for profit power," she said.
The summit kicked off on Monday with the aim of advancing sustainable finance in Switzerland and around the globe. The agenda focused on how to confront the climate and nature crises, widening social inequalities and challenges in mobilizing capital.
'Hungry' for change
The Swiss government teamed with financiers and organizations to launch the initiative in 2019. The idea is to speed the adoption of a global economic model that accomplishes the SDGs, a set of 17 global goals.
"If we don't create the necessary tipping points, we frankly are wasting our time," said Paul Polman, the former CEO of Unilever and author of "Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take."
In 2015, the U.N. General Assembly committed 193 member nations to achieving the global goals by 2030. They seek to end poverty and food insecurity, improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth while tackling climate change and other ecological threats.
"People are actually hungry, hungry, hungry to drive change and action," Polman told the summit headlined by Swiss President Alain Berset, World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and other leaders.
Shedding the traditional profit motive for societal goals will strengthen communities, Dixson-Declève argued.
"We can have strong democracies or we can continue our dangerous obsession with growth," she said. The most important thing we can do right now is invest in social cohesion. at the heart of that is human well-being, economic security and ecological resilience – not growth."
This story has been updated with additional details.
