Top economists call for action on runaway global inequality

People displaced by drought wait to collect water on the outskirts of Baidoa in Somalia. For the first time in a quarter of a century, global poverty and extreme wealth have been rising simultaneously. Photograph: Mohamed Sheikh Nor/AP

Failure to tackle the widening gulf between the world’s rich and poor will entrench poverty and increase the risk of climate breakdown, a group of more than 200 leading economists have said.

In a letter to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, and the World Bank president, Ajay Banga, the signatories from 67 countries call on the two bodies to do more to reverse the sharpest increase in global inequality since the second world war.