A committee of independent experts, delivering a landmark report to the G20, has declared that global inequality is an emergency as urgent as climate change.
The panel, led by Nobel Laureate Joseph E Stiglitz, urged G20 leaders to establish a new scientific body, the International Panel on Inequality (IPI), modeled after the successful Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The proposal comes amid widening wealth gaps worldwide, with experts warning that the crisis threatens democratic stability and economic performance.
The scale of the crisis:
The report, commissioned under South Africa’s G20 Presidency, presents chilling data on the state of global wealth distribution.
Since the year 2000, for every dollar of wealth created globally, 41 cents have gone to the richest 1% of people. The bottom 50% of the world’s population received just one cent of that new wealth. Wealth inequality is now significantly worse than income inequality and has intensified across most countries over the last 40 years.
The experts stress that this concentration of wealth grants huge influence over politics and economies, which severely undermines the foundations of democracy.
An IPCC for inequality:
The committee’s primary recommendation is the creation of the IPI. Just as the IPCC provides governments with non-political, science-based assessments on climate change, the proposed IPI would:
Support Governments: Offer authoritative, independent assessments and analyses of global inequality trends.
Provide Objective Data: Help policymakers track the scale, drivers, and consequences of the inequality emergency.
Offer Solutions: Present a menu of policy options governments and multilateral agencies could use to address the crisis, without making country-specific recommendations.
The panel argues that despite progress in tracking inequality, policymakers still lack sufficient, dependable, or accessible information to coordinate a global response effectively.
Policy is a choice:
The report underscores a key finding: inequality is a policy choice. The experts offered a suite of potential measures for G20 countries to consider, emphasizing that structural changes are necessary.
These policies include:
- Implementing more progressive taxation schemes.
- Curbing monopolies and strengthening competition laws.
- Reforming global trade rules.
- Investing heavily in public services and infrastructure.
- Advancing international cooperation on global tax and debt reforms.
The proposal has already gained significant political backing, with the European Council, the African Union, and leaders from countries like Brazil and Spain endorsing the call for the IPI.
The G20 must now decide whether to champion this unprecedented step—transforming the focus on inequality from political rhetoric into a globally coordinated, science-driven response.
