The Economic Case for Greening the Global Recovery through Cities: Seven priorities for national governments
As the year 2020 has unfolded, COVID-19 has rapidly shifted from primarily being a public health emergency
to becoming a full-blown economic crisis. Economies around the world have ground to a halt, with billions
of people home-confined, often at the cost of their jobs, education and economic security. Although the full
economic consequences remain to be seen, the crisis is projected to cause a cumulative loss of over US$12
trillion to the global economy over two years (2020–21).
Current estimates for job losses by the end of June 2020 are the equivalent of 400 million full-time jobs (14% of
working hours), based on pre-crisis employment levels², while 28% of the global workforce – 1.25 billion people –
work in sectors at risk.³ It is not just formal employment that has been hard hit. In the global south, up to 80% of
urban employment is in the informal sector.
