More than 2,800 environmentalists, academics, lawyers, activists, and community leaders from Mexico to Argentina have already signed the pact.The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated inequality in Latin America, where five of the top 10 countries with the highest transmission rates in the world are located. The ILO estimates more than 41 million people will lose their jobs in the region, while the U.N. has warned that extreme poverty will surpass 83 million people, and deforestation has increased, putting ecosystems and Indigenous communities in jeopardy.Some of the proposals in the pact include cancellation of external debt, offering universal basic income, creating solidarity-based tax reform, building post-extractivist economies, and prioritizing food sovereignty and local health care systems, among others. QUITO — COVID-19 has made it hard to ignore the gaping social and economic inequalities and environmental destruction worldwide, particularly in the global south. That’s why researchers and social movements across Latin America have joined forces to push for, and collaborate on, creating real systemic changes in the new Ecosocial Pact of the South. More than 2,800 experts from Mexico to Argentina have already signed the pact; they include lawyers, economists, environmentalists, Indigenous and Afro-descendent community leaders, and other activists. The agreement lists nine alternative policy proposals for communities, local governments and public institutions to adopt to achieve social and environmental justice across the region and “alter the balance of power.” “The crisis laid bare by the pandemic has worsened inequalities and shows that our future is at stake,” reads the online document. “Taking up proposals developed collectively in different contexts, we are proposing a social, ecological, economic and intercultural pact for Latin America.” The list of proposals includes things like building post-extractivist economies and societies; prioritizing food sovereignty, local health care systems and autonomous local societies; and rethinking local communication networks to provide real alternatives to dominant corporate media. It also includes proposals that will inevitably require participation from governments and institutions, like canceling external debt, ensuring a universal basic income, and renegotiating terms of trade to create more sovereign international integration. “We are raising our voices from the south, not only with complaints but also with alternative proposals,” says Alberto Acosta, an economist and one of the authors of the Ecosocial Pact of the South in Ecuador. “Perhaps not all the proposals are so transformative or revolutionary, but they are viable ideas that also point to dreams that are possible,” he tells Mongabay. In July, the U.N. warned that the pandemic will have “unprecedented impacts” on Latin America and the Caribbean region. For weeks, five of the top 10 countries with the highest COVID-19 transmission rates worldwide have been in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru), according to the Johns Hopkin monitor. The International Labor Organization estimates the number of unemployed people in the region could reach a historic 41 million people this year, up from 26 million in 2019. Another U.N. report warned the rise in unemployment and job precarity in Latin America and the Caribbean could push extreme poverty in the region to more than 83 million people, leading to a significant rise in hunger. Other studies show a significant rise in deforestation worldwide, including the Amazon rainforest, as activities like illegal logging and mining never stopped during lockdown. “We are not interested in patching up this system, but changing the system,” Acosta says. A valley in the upper Amazon, where lowland forest begins to rise towards the Andes in southern Peru. Photo by Rhett A. Butler Viable alternatives Mariluz Nova Laverde, an economics professor at Universidad de la Salle in Bogotá, Colombia, says she signed the pact because its principles align with her work, supporting local communities and alternative modes of development. One of the more important points in the regional agreement, she says, is prioritizing food sovereignty. Colombia has one of the highest rates of land concentration in the world, while more than half of its rural population live in poverty. This is one of the main reasons the war began here more than 50 years ago and continues today, despite the current peace process. During the pandemic, this lack of access to land and ability to grow their own food during an economic crisis has caused increased hunger in Indigenous, Afro-descendent and other rural communities, as well as poor urban sectors across the country. “It is necessary to reevaluate our current lifestyles and development model, as well as our forms of participating in the world market, which have led us to is lose our food sovereignty,” Nova Laverde tells Mongabay by phone from Bogotá. It’s time policymakers move away from an economy dependent on oil, mining, and industrial agriculture, which restrict access to land for local communities, and instead promote community agriculture and local autonomy, she adds. Similar dynamics of land concentration that threatens local livelihoods exist across Latin America. But Acosta says he’s concerned that governments and business elites worldwide are doing their best to return the economy to how it was before rather than contemplate new transformative policies. In Ecuador, he says, that has meant doubling down on the extractive sector. During the pandemic, congress has approved several new laws to attract both national and international investment in the mining and palm oil industries to help boost the economy, despite the contamination, environmental destruction, and community displacements often associated with these industries in the country. Great kiskadees (Pitangus sulphuratus) in Yasuni National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Photo by Jeremy Hance. Global movements As the Ecosocial Pact of the South points out, several traditional institutions have already proposed alternative ideas that would have once been considered extreme and unviable, which gives room for optimism. The U.N. has called for writing off $1 trillion of world debt; the economic agency ECLAC has proposed implementing a universal basic income; while the IMF has advised governments to introduce a wealth tax and, earlier this year, called on equity investors to pay more attention to climate change. Political and social movements in the U.S. and Europe have also been pushing for more holistic social and environmental changes worldwide, whose ideas parallel some of those in the pact. Thea Riofrancos, an assistant professor of political science at Providence College in the U.S., has long been an advocate of the idea of a Global Green New Deal. This takes the same principles from the U.S.-based Green New Deal, which focuses on rapid decarbonization, shifting to renewable energy, and reducing social and economic inequality, but pushes to apply these on a global scale in cooperation with policymakers, social movements, unions and communities around the world, Riofrancos says. “I think what the [pact] points out is that we can’t address the climate crisis in one country alone, we need forms of cooperation and we need changes in the global systems that perpetuate inequality,” as these are the same global systems that perpetuate the climate crisis, she says. Riofrancos looks specifically at policy proposals in the global north to shift to renewable energies to combat the climate crisis, yet this will likely lead to increased mining, mainly in the global south, for things like copper, lithium, cobalt and nickel to build these new technologies. “It matters a lot what type of low carbon future we build,” Riofrancos says, adding that it’s not enough to simply replace current technologies with renewable energies and consume as normal; the global north has to figure out ways to be less materially intensive as a society. Nova Laverde says the pact is a necessary contribution to this global discussion around tackling the climate crisis, as it highlights the complex realities of communities in the global south and their connection with the land. “This helps to have a broader view of both the ecological crisis, which is not only climate change, as well as the alternatives to survive in harmony with nature,” she says. Acosta says the authors of the pact continue to meet and discuss more concrete policy options and what next steps to take. Different country chapters have been launching throughout August, so signatories can focus on the processes and policies most relevant to that country, he says. Banner image: Indigenous Waorani marching to the judicial office Friday April 26 to hear the ruling for their lawsuit against the government. Photo by Mitch Anderson/Amazon Frontlines.