Eco-union is proud to announce that we have signed the international Op-Ed published today in The Guardian and Le Monde, supporting the Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty, an ambitious global initiative developed through a broad participatory process involving more than 400 contributors from academia, the UN system, trade unions, grassroots movements, civil society and international organisations.
The Op-Ed sends a clear message: poverty is not inevitable — it is manufactured. Poverty and inequality are not natural outcomes, but the predictable result of political and economic choices: how tax systems are designed, how labour markets are regulated, how care is valued, how public services are structured, and whose voices are heard in decision-making.
In a context of deepening inequalities and accelerating ecological breakdown, the signatories argue that the dominant reliance on economic growth as the main strategy to fight poverty has failed. An economic model based on endless expansion on a finite planet is not only unfair, but dangerous.
The Roadmap offers 80 concrete policy measures to redesign the global economy around human wellbeing, ecological justice and democratic accountability. It calls for a just transition beyond growth, including debt justice, reparative climate finance, universal social protection floors, stronger South-South cooperation and greater support for countries to define their own sovereign economic futures.
For eco-union, this initiative strongly resonates with our work on ecological transition, social justice and Euro-Mediterranean cooperation. Eradicating poverty and addressing the ecological crisis must be understood as deeply interconnected challenges. Building fair, resilient and democratic economies requires moving beyond narrow growth-centred approaches and placing wellbeing, care, ecological limits and justice at the centre of public policy.
The Roadmap will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council on 25 June 2026. The call for endorsements remains open, and we encourage organisations, experts and citizens to support this important agenda.
The Roadmap will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council on 25 June 2026 — and the call for endorsements remains open.
Read the call in The Guardian and Le Monde.