Towards an Inclusive Recovery: A Call to Action from the South

Background & Context

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global health crisis as well as an economic and social one. It has brought into sharp focus the structural failings of the global economy, particularly on those in the Global South living in precarity and suffering the worst impacts of the climate crisis. The long-term implications of the pandemic, coupled with existing structural failures in global finance, debt, and climate, will be profound for the hundreds of millions living in the Global South. There is a real risk of, not only an acceleration towards the next global recession, but also of significant reversals on the incremental gains made over the past several years to meaningfully reduce poverty, encourage deeper climate financing, advance human rights, and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  

In order for the recovery to be inclusive, environmentally sustainable and legitimate for the Global South, ongoing policy discussions must challenge mainstream approaches to economic recovery, address persistent inequalities around the world, and ensure the realisation of all human, individual and collective rights without discrimination. Therefore, policies for economic recovery should prioritise the various transversal macroeconomic issues affecting the Global South, such as the high risk of debt distress and unsustainable debt levels of lower income and middle-income countries, unproductive and regressive tax regimes, preferential trade agreements, cuts in vital social services and social transfers, and dependence on extractive industries. Equally, responses will need to contest the underlying principles that underpin mainstream economic development models that are harmful to workers, women, youth, and rural/indigenous/afro-descendant communities. However, given the significant regional differences across the Global South, and recognizing contrasting definitions of what the Global South encompasses (competing political economy priorities, varying contributions to, and impact by, the climate crisis, as well as varying economic landscapes), socio-economic recovery responses will necessarily emphasize different reform priorities in each region in order to be most responsive to the needs and interests of its most vulnerable populations. 

Within this context, the Ford Foundation, in partnership with the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, has identified a window of opportunity to ensure that prevailing global and regional policy discussions, on short and medium-term recovery from the crisis, advance alternative and credible policy proposals that are more socially just, centre the priorities and interests of the Global South, and maximise prospects of reducing structural inequalities.  

About the Inclusive and Sustainable Economic Recovery Ford Initiative      

This Ford initiative is managed by a cross-programmatic team of grant-making staff from across the Ford Foundation. The purpose of these types of initiatives is to amplify the foundation’s impact by funding areas of intersection between approved strategies that advance outcomes or approaches that will benefit more than one strategy or region, have the potential to be real force-multipliers, and cannot be adequately funded by any one program/office. This particular initiative is a one-time funding initiative in response to the challenges and opportunities resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies provides secretarial and research support.

Project Team

Ford Plus Fund Coordinating Team

• Srinivasan Iyer Senior Programme Office, Ford Foundation New Delhi
• Ana Carolina González Espinosa Senior Program Officer Natural Resource and Climate Change Ford Foundation Bogotá
• Sally Schuster Executive and Program Assistant Ford Foundation Andean Region
• Jessica Dalton Rees Programme Associate Future of Workers New York
• Justin Sylvester Programme Officer Ford Foundation Johannesburg

SCIS Research and Secretariat

• Siviwe Mhlana Researcher: Inequality Studies, Southern Centre for Inequality Studies
• David Francis Deputy Director, Southern Centre for Inequality Studies
• Imraan Valoda Director, Southern Centre for Inequality Studies

Ford foundation Advisory Board

• Professor Imraan Valodia: Member (Southern Centre for Inequalities, University of the Witwatersrand); Director Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, and Pro Vice-Chancellor: Climate Sustainability and Inequality.
• Professor Attiya Waris: Member (University of Nairobi, Kenya); Acting Deputy Principal of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS); Director of Research and Enterprise and the only Professor of Fiscal Law and Policy in Eastern Africa.
• Dr Magdalena Sepúlveda: Member (GI-ESCR Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Latin America); Executive Director of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
• Dr Grieve Chelwa: Member (New School, Southern Africa); Inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute on Race and Political Economy at the New School.
• Professor José Antonio Ocampo: Member (Columbia University, Latin America); Director of the Economic and Political Development Concentration in the School of International and Public Affairs, Member of Committee on Global Thought and co-President of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University.
• Arjun Jayadev: Member (Azim Premj University, Asia); Director at the School of Arts and Sciences at Azim Premji University (APU), Bangalore, and a Director of the Research Centre.
• Anannya Bhattacharjee: Member (Asia Floor Wage Alliance, Asia); International Coordinator of the Asia Floor Wage Alliance a global supply chain campaign for living wages and a violence-free workplace for garment workers in Asia.
• Dr Rogerio Studart: Member (World Resources Institute US/Global); senior fellow of the World Resources Institute, working on the new climate economy.
• Chung-Wha Hong: Member (Grassroots International, US/Global); Executive Director of Grassroots International. 
• Chee Yoke Ling: Member (Third World Network, Global); international lawyer with expertise on the environmental, social and economic impacts of globalization, especially in countries of the South.
• Alin Halimatussadiah: Member (The Institute for Economic and Social Research, Indonesia); Lecturer at the Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Indonesia (FEB UI) since 2004.
• Professor Daniel Bradlow: Member (University of Pretoria, South Africa); SARCHI Professor of International Development Law and African Economic Relations at the University of Pretoria and Professor Emeritus at American University Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C.
• Vanessa Erogbogbo: Chief of the Sustainable and Inclusive Value Chains section at the International Trade Centre
• Scott Morris: Senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, director of the center’s US Development Policy program and co-director of the Sustainable Development Finance program.
• Margarita Antonio: Ayni Fund Programs Coordinator at International Indigenous Women Forum in Nicaragua.