By JoAnne Wadsworth, Communications Consultant, G20 Interfaith Forum
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This is the first in a three-part series covering IF20’s three draft discussion papers, each developed in response to one of the priorities of the 2026 U.S. G20 presidency. This post gives an overview of “Economic Prosperity for the Common Good,” compiled by Betsy Bennion, Associate Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at BYU Law School, with contributions from attorneys, student researchers, and members of IF20’s Religion and Environment Working Group. The paper has been revised following discussion at Faith for Impact, a forum convened at Georgetown University, and will be adapted for presentation at the IF20 annual gathering in Salt Lake City this October. The full paper is available for those who want the detail behind this summary.
The United States has named three core themes for its 2026 G20 presidency: unleashing economic prosperity by limiting regulatory burdens, unlocking affordable and secure energy supply chains, and pioneering new technologies and innovations. IF20 has drafted a discussion paper on each. The first takes up the economic priority, and asks a question that sits just underneath it: Prosperity for whom, and measured how?
That question shapes everything that follows. The paper declines to equate economic prosperity with GDP growth alone, defining it instead as the set of measures that increase human wellbeing, and treating the “common good” as encompassing a wide range of efforts to meet basic human needs and worthy community goals: poverty, hunger, housing, water and energy access, employment, health, and social justice among them.
What the Paper Covers
It begins where the G20 already is. The Debt Service Suspension Initiative gave low-income countries temporary relief during the pandemic but left underlying debt problems unresolved, and the Common Framework that followed has moved slowly (only four countries have requested treatment despite widespread debt distress). The Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, launched at the 2024 Rio summit, reflects growing recognition that progress depends on financial architecture as much as on social policy.
The paper then surveys how faith traditions understand poverty, and finds wide variation. Approaches range from structural reform to personal piety, from self-reliance programs to large centralized humanitarian operations, from world-renouncing detachment to active social engagement. But a common thread runs through nearly all of it: the duty to care for those in need, and to help them toward self-sufficiency. Islam institutionalizes it through zakat, waqf, and sadaqat. Judaism treats tzedakah as obligation rather than option. The Jubilee tradition calls for the periodic forgiveness of debts. Ubuntu holds that personal wealth carries a responsibility to the community.
The longest section documents what faith communities actually deliver: hunger relief, health care, disaster response, education, housing, volunteer mobilization, and job training, alongside debt relief advocacy, ethical and social-impact investing, microfinance, and programs for women in poverty. The scale is routinely underestimated. Caritas Internationalis reports three million staff and volunteers across more than 200 countries. Catholic Relief Services’ microfinance programs have reached more than 5.4 million of the world’s poorest people. A 2022 Oxford study mapped roughly $5 trillion in faith-based investment assets. This is delivery infrastructure, not charity at the margins, and it matters more as humanitarian aid budgets contract worldwide.
On deregulation itself, the paper takes the question in both directions. Removing unnecessary bureaucratic burdens can lower barriers to market entry and help small businesses, and housing is one plausible area where reform could expand supply. But weakened worker protections and environmental safeguards fall hardest on the poor, who are more exposed by where they live, the infrastructure available to them, and the work they do. One form of deregulation the paper endorses without hesitation is the reduction of restrictions on religious entities and practices, which research consistently links to gains in investment, innovation, stability, and human development.
What the Paper Recommends
For religious and interfaith communities, three recommendations:
- Build out philanthropy in cooperation with governments. Partner with local governments and experienced NGOs, and make partners aware of the volunteer capacity faith communities can mobilize quickly.
- Increase social impact, ethical investment, and microfinancing. Align institutional and member investments with stated values, and favor microfinance models built around community structures, which perform best.
- Lift up women in poverty. Work with governments to build programs that empower women as economic agents and contributors to the common good.
For G20 governments, three more:
- Improve regulatory environments. Reduce bureaucratic burdens on business, especially small firms, while guarding worker safety and pay and maintaining smart environmental protection.
- Enlist religious communities as foreign aid allies. As aid budgets shrink, work creatively with faith networks to magnify effort and avoid duplication — and begin those conversations before a crisis develops.
- Embrace effective debt relief in partnership with the faith sector. Build on the faith-based organizations already swapping or forgiving debt in exchange for investment in poverty reduction, health, and climate resilience.
Two more posts will follow in this series, covering IF20’s papers on energy and on new technologies. All three remain discussion drafts, and the word is meant literally: they were written to provoke conversation within and across religious and interfaith communities, and to open dialogue with government leaders. Those working at the intersection of faith and economic policy are encouraged to read the full paper and weigh in ahead of the Salt Lake City gathering in October.
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JoAnne Wadsworth is a Communications Consultant for the G20 Interfaith Forum Association and Editor of the Viewpoints blog, IF20’s platform for commentary at the intersection of faith and global policy. She has covered the work of the Forum across multiple G20 cycles, producing summaries, articles, and editorial content that bring the voices of interfaith leaders and scholars to a broader audience. Her writing engages with topics spanning environmental governance, religious freedom, anti-racism, poverty and inequality, and the role of faith in multilateral policy processes. “Economic Prosperity for the Common Good” was compiled by Betsy Bennion, Associate Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at BYU Law School, and reflects the contributions of a wide group of IF20 researchers and working group members.