On July 8, Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, shared his message for 2020 HLPF event « Human Development Through Social and Environmental Justice for All, » organized by UNDP and International Movement ATD Fourth World.
The UN Special Rapporteur proposed that recovery plans can be both pro-climate and pro-poor by relying on four key pillars:
- Invest in climate mitigation strategies that can create employment opportunities for people with lower levels of qualification, including retrofitting buildings, recycling and the circular economy, renewable energies, and agroecology.
- Invest in public goods that can make goods and services necessary for the exercise of human rights more affordable for households in poverty, for instance by strengthening public transportation and by encouraging decentralized energy grids in rural areas.
- Ensure the participation of people in poverty in designing recovery plans and the Green Deals associated with them.
- Ensure that these recovery plans are financed by progressive taxation schemes on the wealthiest parts of the population and large corporations.