A new report, “People’s Money: Harnessing Digitalisation to Finance a Sustainable Future,” by the United Nations Secretary General’s Task Force on Digital Finance has set out an ambitious, practical ‘Action Agenda.’
Centrally, it spelt out how digital finance can be harnessed in ways that empower citizens as taxpayers and investors in envisaging a digital transformation at a scale that better aligns people’s money with their needs, collectively expressed by the Sustainable Development Goals.
The report highlighted how billions of people around the world were responding to the COVID-19 pandemic using digital tools to work, spend and socialise.
It argued there “is a historic opportunity” to harness digitalisation in placing citizens, the ultimate owners of the world’s financial resources, in control of finance to ensure that it meets their needs, today and in the future.
The task force identified five catalytic opportunities for harnessing digitalisation in aligning financing with the SDGs.
According to a statement by the UN, the task force’s ‘Action Agenda’ is a call to action to businesses, policymakers and those governing finance to do what it takes to deliver on these opportunities.
It spelt out not only the ‘what’ but also the ‘how’: investments, new capabilities and governance innovations can get the job done.
The report concluded that harnessing digitalisation for the good “is a choice, not an inevitability” driven by technology.
The ‘Action Agenda’ pointed to actions needed to overcome digital risks that, unmitigated, could deepen exclusion, discrimination and inequalities, and separate finance further from the needs of inclusive, sustainable development.
