Building Care Systems for a Sustainable Future

Why care systems matter

Care work, paid and unpaid, underpins every economy and every household. Yet it is still counted as nobody’s business: absent from national accounts, thin in public budgets and carried, overwhelmingly, by women. The webinar brought together ministers, researchers and care workers to ask what a care system built for a warming world would look like, and who would pay for it. It drew on the United Nations care agenda and on the experience of three cities.

The first session set out the numbers. Unpaid care amounts to between nine and eleven per cent of global output, more than manufacturing in many economies, and the climate crisis is adding to it: every flood, drought and heatwave lands first on the people who fetch water, cook, nurse and rebuild. Care and climate resilience, the panel argued, are one policy problem wearing two hats.

The second session turned to what works. Bogotá’s care blocks put laundries, training and respite within walking distance of the women who need them. Mexico City has written care into its constitution. Kenya’s community health promoters are now salaried. None of these is finished, and all of them were built on the same three moves: count the work, fund the work, and put the people doing it in the room.

What the webinar covered

• Measuring unpaid care in national statistics, and why time-use surveys are the place to start.
• Financing care systems through progressive taxation rather than user fees.
• Care infrastructure as climate adaptation: cooling centres, water points and community kitchens.
• The role of member organisations in taking these models across borders.

Investing in care is investing in our people and our future. A city that cares for its carers is a city that can weather anything.
Clara Brugada, Mayor of Mexico City

The recording and the slides are available to members, and a second session on financing is planned for the spring. Members who would like to present their own care models at that session can write to the secretariat.