Global Justice Report

The Global Justice Report has just been released at the World Inequality Conference in Paris 4-6 June 2026. It explores what a just distribution of socioeconomic and environmental resources could look like at the global level from 2026 to 2100 – both between and within countries – in a way that is compatible with planetary boundaries. It provides an alternative to climate breakdown, political extremism and economic tensions.

The report shows how humanity can raise living standards, reduce inequality and keep global heating within a 2°C rise, with a sweeping vision for planetary survival. It offers a set of bold policy proposals, including hefty wealth taxes on billionaires, sharp reductions in working hours, a change in diets away from red meat, and a shift of investment from materially intense sectors, such as industry and mining, to education and health. If these and other measures are taken, the incomes of 89% of the world’s population would double by 2100 and global heating would be restrained. This vision provides a positive alternative to the grim projections from far-right techno extractivists, nationalists and billionaires who claim the future will inevitably bring more fossil fuels, climate disruption and inequality. The broad scope of the report incorporates inequality studies, climate science and proposals for creating a political coalition capable of reforming the world’s financial architecture.

It was prepared by the Global Justice Project (GJP) that aims to provide a platform to stimulate research, policymaking, and citizen engagement to shape a fairer, more democratic and sustainable 21st century. It is a collective research initiative developed by the World Inequality Lab, that is researching:
• Measurement of historical income and wealth dynamics
• Environmental inequalities
• Global wealth distribution dynamics
• Factors contributing to income and wealth inequality
• Political inequalities
• Gender inequality
• Inequality perceptions
• Taxation and tax evasion
• Methodological advances in the measurement of inequalities.

Combining comparative historical data series from the World Inequality Database with global input-output tables, environmental accounts, labour force surveys and other sources, the project explores what a just distribution of socio-economic and environmental resources could look like at the global level from 2025 to 2100 – both between and within countries – in a way that is compatible with planetary boundaries. The Global Justice Project has a dedicated website that includes an interactive tool to explore the distributional pathways and climate scenarios behind the report.

The project partly builds on the analysis and proposals set out in Thomas Piketty’s Brief History of Equality, extending them into a broader and more comprehensive global framework. It builds on “global convergence” scenarios that combine two key goals:
1. Socio-economic equality: Full economic convergence between countries, full gender equality in labour hours and pay, sharp compression of within country income scale and wealth scale, combined with fair access to education, health care and effective participation in all aspects of social, economic, cultural and political life.
2. Planetary habitability: Aligning global resource use within ecological boundaries, accounting for carbon budgets, raw material constraints and the preservation of biodiversity.

To achieve these goals, the GJP envisages a radical transformation of the global production system and international economic arrangements over the 21st century. This would entail not only a re-structuring of the sectoral and gender composition of labour time and rapid reduction of carbon, material intensities of production, but also a strong shift towards more equal terms of international trade and monetary exchange.

To support critical investments in human capital as well as climate mitigation and adaptation, particularly in the Global South, the GJP proposes a Global Justice Fund, to be financed by the global rich and through a radical transformation of the international financial and monetary regime.

SOURCES: https://inequalitylab.world/en/global-justice-project/
https://wid.world/document/global-justice-report/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/04/world-inequality-la…