December 22, 2009

The policy discussions at the summit

The global unemployment crises immediately and urgently calls out for a powerful response. The consequences of up to a billion unemployed and disenchanted youth in the world is unimaginable, in the north as well as in the south. Moral imperatives mandate urgent action, as does the need for social stability

We are facing an immediate social crises. This unfolds against the backdrop of an equally urgent but more long-term imperative: the required structural shift of our global economy towards ecological sustainability. Furthermore, it does so at a time when the financial crisis has already streched national accounts to historic levels and where the level of risk in the global financial and monetary system is extreme.

This situation poses very serious challenges for policy makers. The prospects of handling these in a piecemeal way are not promising. Instead, we need policy instruments that allow us to get to the logic of the present system responsible for generating the various imbalances.

Therefore, just as the summit takes its starting points in tangible ventures which carry within them answers to multiple challenges, the task of the policy discussions is to look for the policy frameworks and governance models that can solve multiple challenges, and help the emerging models on display translate into systems impact.

In other words: given the financial environment, what actions available today could simultaneously address the employment crises and support the emergence of a new kind of value creation?

The discussions will proceed form documented cases of promising policies in this area, documented and discussed in a Tällberg policy paper to be presented in the spring of 2010.

The expected outcome of the policy discussion is the general principles for a holistic global jobs programme, designed to respond to the confluence of social, financial and ecological crises - in terms of governance structure, finanical mechanisms and implementational strategy.

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