Partnering for Action: The Global Accelerator promoted at the Finance in Common Summit 2023
News Release | 08 September 2023
The 2023 meeting of the Finance in Common Summit (FiCs) organized by the global network of Public Development Banks (PDBs) on 4-6 September aimed to strengthen partnerships and reinforce commitments towards sustainable development goals (SDGs).
The event hosted in Cartagena, Colombia, brought together representatives from 520 PDBs from around the world with key stakeholders from the private sector, civil society and international organizations to discuss how to make finance more inclusive and more sustainable.
The high-level panel on day one titled “Supporting a Just Transition and Just Resilience: Emerging Approaches and Partnership Opportunities” provided an opportunity to showcase how the Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for Just Transitions serves as a frontline initiative to advance joint efforts and direct public and private investments needed to accelerate the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.
Valérie Schmitt, Deputy Director of the Social Protection Department of the International Labour Organization, remarked that the Global Accelerator promotes investments in promising sectors of the economy (such as energy, agriculture, care and digital economies) and at the same time, investments in social protection and employment policies and institutions. Combined, these investments contribute to just transitions by creating formal enterprises and jobs that are decent, where people have higher levels of income and can start contributing to social security and pay taxes. This expands fiscal space for new domestic investments.
“ PDBs cooperating in the context of the Global Accelerator would increase the social impact of their investments, contribute to a more inclusive and sustainable economic development, facilitate just transitions that also benefit people, support national strategies and priorities to extend social protection and promote decent job creation based on co-created national roadmaps."
Valérie Schmitt, Deputy Director ILO Social Protection Department
Roundtable: Supporting a Just Transition and Just Resilience: Emerging Approaches and Partnership Opportunities
The Global Accelerator promotes a more inclusive model of development where human rights and labour standards provide essential guardrails to navigate trade-offs, increase equality and promote policies that ringfence social spending and protect the most vulnerable. The initiative aims to advocate for bilateral cooperation and collective action with PDBs towards more social investments, and greater alignment of their operations with the SDGs and the Paris Agreement by 2030.
During Plenary 5 on Building Bridges: Public Development Banks as Catalysts for Human Rights, Claudia Coenjaerts, ILO Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, stressed the urgency to discuss how development finance can ensure human rights approaches through joint cooperation, commitment, and social dialogue.
“To contribute to the achievement of human rights and decent work through your projects, you can join us, the UN and the World Bank in the Global Accelerator.”
Coenjaerts further added, “Collaborating with the Global Accelerator has advantages for development banks, as it offers a platform at the country level for engagement with all relevant ministries, workers, and employers. And it offers proven tools to measure banks’ social impact, such as the Jobs Marker System developed with the African Development Bank.”
The Global Accelerator was also promoted during a side meeting organized with the Coalition for Social Investments of the FICS on building cooperation with PDBs in the context of the Global Accelerator. During the meeting, three areas of collaboration between the Global Accelerator and PDBs were identified. More specifically, PDBs could support through their operations the development of national roadmaps for the implementation of the Global Accelerator; prioritize social impact in the instruction of new projects; and improve impact measurement to build evidence on their contributions to decent work, universal social protection, and social justice.
Brochure: How to build cooperation with PDBs in the context of the Global Accelerator?