One for All: An Action Plan for Financing Global Vaccination and Sustainable Growth

The ravages of Covid-19 are well known. Just as the entire world shared in the spread and pain of the pandemic, we must now share in orchestrating its end, and a transition to a just, equitable, and sustainable recovery. This will require an immediate burst of revitalized multilateralism and creativity utilizing the financing tools and institutions readily at hand.

The pandemic cannot be contained and the rebuilding cannot fully begin until the virus is halted in every country. For this reason, we must act swiftly to achieve a global vaccination rate of up to 70 percent by the end of 2022.

This Action Plan, the first in a series, highlights three mutually reinforcing goals leveraging the power of existing multilateral financial architecture:

Goal 1: The issuance, reallocation, and leveraging of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) by the International Monetary Fund to ensure equitable global access to vaccines

Goal 2: Unleashing the full lending power of the World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) for a climate-friendly and equitable recovery

Goal 3: Leveraging private capital at scale through new, innovative investment vehicles

In the first installment of this plan, we focus on Goal 1, and on the steps needed to mobilize funding to contain and suppress the virus. We believe that an early SDR issuance and the reallocation of excess SDRs from rich countries to poor can ensure adequate funding to end the pandemic by the end of 2022. Successfully leveraging SDRs for pandemic response will generate political momentum for achieving a climate-neutral and equitable recovery in the tail end of 2021. In future iterations of this series, we will dive deeper into the role of MDBs and private sector engagement for achieving success ahead of the G20 Summit and COP26 towards the end of 2021.