GIA offered the webinar Post-COVID19: a green and inclusive recovery for Latin America on May 20 to exchange ideas on how responses to the immediate public health and economic challenges could also incorporate considerations and actions on structural economic changes that re-evaluate current development models towards more just and sustainable development alternatives.
Around 130 participants heard engaging ideas from Gabriel Quijandría Acosta, Vice Minister of Strategic Development, Natural Resources and the Environment in Peru, Monica de Bolle, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Gustavo Fonseca, Program Director of the Global Environment Facility, and Esteban Perez, Development Finance Coordinator, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC-UN), moderated by Susan Paulson, Professor in the Center for Latin American Studies, University of Florida.
The webinar highlighted the interrelationship between economic, social and environmental aspects of recovery and development, the important role of public development banks, and the need to provide incentives and policy levers to promote a green economy and social infrastructure.
More fundamentally, Latin America needs a more integrated development model less dependent on global markets and financial flows. Several participants highlighted the important role of civil society, both in terms of elaborating proposals for alternative development pathways and to create the political support and will to implement them.
