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Institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund should be at the center of a “much more robust international response” to the pandemic, as well as helping finance a global recovery from the virus, the Rockefeller Foundation said in a report Tuesday.
The foundation outlined in a 22-page report what it said was a financing strategy first to stop the pandemic through widespread vaccinations in developing countries — and then to fund a worldwide rebuilding effort that is both equitable and climate friendly.
“Just as the entire world shared the spread and pain of covid-19, we must now share in orchestrating an end to the pandemic and a transition to a recovery that is just, equitable, sustainable and lasting,” the foundation said. “The pandemic cannot be contained, and the rebuilding fully begun, until the virus is halted in every country.”
The report includes contributors such as former British prime minister Gordon Brown and U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs, who heads the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.
It proposes the IMF swiftly issue and approve $650 billion in additional reserve assets, known as Special Drawing Rights, to help developing nations immunize up to 70 percent of their populations by the end of 2022.
After that, the World Bank and other financial institutions should expand their lending power “to free up hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in a clean and equitable recovery in developing economies and emerging markets,” the report said.
The foundation said new virus variants spreading around the globe “could cause rolling outbreaks resulting in further economic shutdowns.”
“To turn the tide, we must first defeat the pandemic, not just within our own countries but everywhere,” the report said. “Failure to do so will mean an increase in the development of variants that could prolong the pandemic everywhere, squandering the trillions already spent to buttress developed world economies and beat back the pandemic at home. Therefore, the most urgent financing priority is to stop the virus in its tracks everywhere.”
