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13. Challenges Ahead
- Indiana University Press
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214 a future for the un and the planet 13. Challenges Ahead • Ten Global Challenges • An Intellectual and Action Agenda for the UN As we write this chapter in late 2008, the world is in the midst of a financial and economic crisis perhaps as grave as any since the 1930s. Perhaps as much as any recent event, the global financial and economic meltdown made even clearer what many less serious previous ones had not, namely the risks, problems, and enormous costs of a global economy without adequate international institutions , democratic decision-making, and powers to bring order and ensure compliance . Most countries, especially the major powers, clearly are not yet ready to accept the need for serious international measures and the inroads that they would make on their own sovereignty. However, the logic of global interdependence and an ever-growing number of crises would seem to place this necessity more squarely on the international agenda. In spite of the seriousness of this crisis and the clear evidence of its international dimensions, most of the initial search for remedial action consisted of western political leaders conferring among themselves. Through most of 2008, the focus was on western action to tackle the western dimensions of the crisis. Nor did western leaders give much attention to the impact on poor people and poor countries. Consultation with countries beyond the West was limited and was little reported in the media. International consultations largely avoided the Bretton Woods institutions and the United Nations. Such an approach demonstrated only too clearly the limited perspectives within the dominant economic and financial community today. But as the crisis spread, it was becoming clear that these were inadequate for solving the global problems and that major reforms of international approaches and institutions were needed. Many commentators and political leaders around the world made this point. Governments of developed countries, though still mostly relying on national actions, have broadened international consultations beyond the G-8 to embrace the G-20, the twenty largest economies of the world. But by early 2009, the president of the UN General Assembly was organizing a truly global challenges ahead 215 summit on the economic crisis to be preceded by a working group of distinguished international economists. The findings of our history have already identified key issues that need to be brought into the solutions for the current crisis and into reforms of existing international mechanisms to prevent a recurrence. These include stronger international regulation of financial and economic operations, mechanisms to avoid extremes of instability transmitted in the operations of the global financial and economic system, measures to help maintain medium- and longterm sustainability, and measures to protect the poorest countries and poorest people. In short, stability, sustainability, and equity need to be built into more robust global institutions. An essential step is the reform of representation within international organizations to give more weight to emerging economies and to poorer and weaker countries. The proposals presented to the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 were bold and intellectually brilliant, drawing on the best minds of the times and going far beyond the conventional analysis and wisdom of that day or today. They were driven by the fears of repeating the 1930s, the confident hopes of building a new postwar world, and the fact that serious discussion could be limited to the three powers that mattered—the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom. Today, the world is much more complicated, and the challenge is even greater. Incorporating mechanisms to respond to the major challenges ahead over the medium to longer run is another challenge. These also are not easy to forecast, as we can see by looking back ten years to 1999, when the UN Intellectual History Project was started. When we launched the UN Intellectual History Project in 1999, Russia was in the most difficult of economic, social, and political situations. Ten years later it not only is back on its feet but is playing an assertive role on the international stage. In 1999, China and India were already doing reasonably well, but no comparison can be made with how they roared ahead subsequently. In 1999, although global warming was being discussed by experts or environmentalists, the threat was seen mainly in ambivalent and critical terms. A decade later there are very few doubters left, though there is still much debate about what needs to be done. In 1999, the United States was at the end of one of the longest...