MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“Let’s face it: the old (economic) model is broken: we need to create a new one”

Ban Ki-moon: “a new paradigm based on stable economies and decent jobs and opportunities for all.”

United Nations senior officials stressed the importance of establishing a new paradigm for growth that ensures social inclusiveness, job opportunities for all, and more accountability from the financial sector to tackle the ongoing global economic crisis.

“It is time to recognize that human capital and natural capital are every bit as important as financial capital,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in remarks to the General Assembly’s high-level thematic debate on The State of the World Economy and Finance and its Impact on Development, taking place at UN Headquarters in New York.

“Let us face the facts: the old model is broken. We need to create a new one – a new model for dynamic growth,” Mr. Ban, one of the meeting’s co-chairs, said. “A new paradigm based on stable economies and decent jobs and opportunities for all.”

Noting that since the financial economic crisis began, millions of people have lost jobs and income, Mr. Ban stressed that governments must not only address this job loss but also actively seek to create new income sources over the next years.

“Worldwide, more than 400 million new jobs will be needed over the next decade. That means that policy-makers must get serious, now, about generating decent employment,” he said.
Mr. Ban emphasized the key role that the upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) can play in brining countries together to come up with a coordinated approach to set up goals for the future regarding the economy.

“Growth that is equitable, growth that can be sustained within planetary boundaries, growth that will benefit current and future generations – this is the focus of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development next month in Rio de Janeiro,” he said.

He added that, “At Rio, we need to agree on a process to establish Sustainable Development Goals that build on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) after 2015 – sustainable development goals that will lay the foundation for dynamic economic growth, respect for the planet and social equity.”

There are a total of eight MDGs, ranging from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015. They form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institutions and have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest.

Following the opening of the event, attendees of the debate broke out into four thematic roundtable discussions focusing on various issues, such as youth unemployment, social protection, debt sustainability, trade and investment, and accountability of the financial system.

Among the keynote speakers at the event are the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso; the Nobel Prize Laureate and President of Columbia University, Joseph Stiglitz; and Paul Volcker, the former head of the United States Federal Reserve.