We can afford to reverse poverty and climate breakdown. What we can’t afford is the alternative | Kevin Watkins

Our global finance system is failing to rise to the challenges we face. It's time it was reimagined - and grounded in our shared humanity

The peoples of the Earth," Henry Morgenthau said, are inseparably linked by a deep underlying community of purpose."

In July 1944, Morgenthau, the US Treasury secretary, was closing the Bretton Woods conference with a reflection on extreme nationalism and the failures of cooperation that had led to war. Cautioning against the pursuit of national interest through the plan-less, senseless rivalry that divided us", he outlined an accord for new institutions grounded in an appeal to shared humanity.