Everybody’s Business: Strengthening International Cooperation in a More Interdependent World

Everybody’s Business:
Strengthening International Cooperation
in a More Interdependent World

Report of the Global Redesign Initiative

Under the patronage of the:

Government of Qatar
Government of Singapore
Government of Switzerland
Government of Tanzania

The various views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect those
of the Patron Governments.
Nor do the various views expressed in this report necessarily reflect those
of all the Global Agenda Council Members, Industry Partner communities
or Young Global Leader Task Forces, nor do they represent an institutional
position of the World Economic Forum or its Members.

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Contents
Preface 5
By Klaus Schwab

Executive Summary 7

Timeline 17

Systemic Overview 19
By Richard Samans, Klaus Schwab and Mark Malloch-Brown

Creating a Values Framework 47
By John DeGioia

Proposals
Global Agenda Council on Education Systems 57
Global Agenda Council on Faith 73
Global Agenda Council on the Future of Entertainment / Global Agenda Council on Marketing 81
& Branding (joint proposal)
Global Agenda Council on the Gender Gap 87
Global Agenda Council on Philanthropy & Social Investing 103
Global Agenda Council on Values 109
Global Agenda Council on the Welfare of Children 113
Young Global Leader Oath Project Task Force 117

Building Sustained Economic Growth 127
By Robert Lawrence

Proposals
Corruption: Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI) 137
Global Agenda Council on Economic Growth & Development 145
Global Agenda Council on Emerging Multinationals 153
Global Agenda Council on Trade 159
Young Global Leader Global Responsibility Licensing Task Force 169

Strengthening the International Monetary and Financial System 175
By David Daokui Li and Suzanne Nora Johnson

Proposals
Global Agenda Council on Global Investment Flows 187
Global Agenda Council on the International Monetary System 199
Global Agenda Council on Systemic Financial Risk 203

Creating Employment, Eradicating Poverty and Improving Social Welfare 211
By John McArthur and Dennis Snower

Proposals
Global Agenda Council on Employment & Social Protection 227
Global Agenda Council on Fragile States 233
Global Agenda Council on Poverty & Development Finance 237
Global Agenda Council on the Skills Gap 249
Global Agenda Council on Social Entrepreneurship 257
Young Global Leader Millennium Development Goals Task Force 263

Global Redesign Initiative | 3

Managing and Mitigating Global Risks 277
By Ian Goldin

Proposals
Global Agenda Council on Catastrophic Risks 289
Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies 301
Global Agenda Council on Energy Security 309
Global Agenda Council on the Future of the Internet 317
Global Agenda Council on Humanitarian Assistance 323
Global Agenda Council on Illicit Trade 331
Global Agenda Council on Population Growth 339

Ensuring Health for All 347
By Peter Piot, David E. Bloom and Peter C. Smith

Proposals
Global Agenda Council on Chronic Diseases & Conditions 359
Global Agenda Council on Food Security / Global Agenda Council on Nutrition (joint proposal) 367
Global Agenda Council on Global Healthcare Systems & Cooperation 375
Global Agenda Council on a Healthy Next Generation 381

Enhancing Global Security 387
By Lilia Shevtsova and Jean-Marie Guéhenno

Proposals
Global Agenda Council on Human Rights & Protection 399
Global Agenda Council on International Security Cooperation 409
Global Agenda Council on Negotiation & Conflict Resolution 413
Global Agenda Council on Terrorism & Weapons of Mass Destruction 421

Ensuring Sustainability 429
By Ashok Khosla and Caio Koch-Weser

Proposals
Global Agenda Council on the Future of China 439
Global Agenda Council on the Future of Mining & Metals 445
Global Agenda Council on the Future of Transportation 449
Low-Carbon Prosperity Task Force on Adaptation 465
Low-Carbon Prosperity Task Force on Avoided Deforestation and Land Use Change 467
Low-Carbon Prosperity Task Force on Energy Efficiency 471
Low-Carbon Prosperity Task Force on Accelerating Investment: Developing Countries 477
Low-Carbon Prosperity Task Force on Accelerating Investment: Low-Carbon Technologies 483
Low-Carbon Prosperity Task Force on Market Mechanisms 489
Low-Carbon Prosperity Task Force on Standards and Metrics 493
Global Agenda Council on Ocean Governance 497
Global Agenda Council on Sustainable Consumption 517
Global Agenda Council on Sustainable Energy 531
Global Agenda Council on Water Security and World Economic Forum Water Initiative 535
Global Agenda Council on Water Security 541
Young Global Leader Restoring Ocean Health Task Force 547
Young Global Leader Transforming Urban Mobility Task Force 555

Building Effective Institutions in an Empowered Society 561
By Ngaire Woods and Kishore Mahbubani

Proposals
Global Agenda Council on Benchmarking Progress in Society 571
Global Agenda Council on the Future of Government 581
Global Agenda Council on the International Legal System 593
Young Global Leader Civic Eyes Task Force 597

4 | Global Redesign Initiative

Preface

Over the past year, the World Economic Forum has facilitated a global, multistakeholder dialogue on the future of
international cooperation under the patronage of the Governments of Qatar, Singapore, Switzerland and Tanzania. Our
purpose has been to stimulate a strategic thought process among all stakeholders about ways in which international
institutions and arrangements should be adapted to contemporary challenges. This report summarizes and interprets the
significance of the proposals that the Forum’s many communities have developed in response to this challenge.

Since the summer of 2009, over 1,200 of the world’s leading authorities have been working in interdisciplinary,
multistakeholder Global Agenda Councils to identify gaps and deficiencies in international cooperation and to formulate
specific proposals for improvement on over 50 global challenges. A meeting of more than 700 of these experts was held in
Dubai in November. Other Forum communities, notably Industry Partners, Young Global Leaders and Social Entrepreneurs
have also contributed ideas. In parallel these discussions have run through the Forum’s Regional Summits during 2009 as
well as the Forum’s recent Annual Meeting 2010 in Davos-Klosters, where many of the emerging proposals were tested
with ministers, CEOs, heads of NGOs and trade unions, leading academics and other members of the Davos community. In
addition, three country hearings were hosted by patron governments on the topics of United Nations reform (Switzerland),
energy security governance (Qatar) and Asia’s role in global governance (Singapore).

The Global Redesign process is now at a point where the findings, a critique of the gaps and failures in international
cooperation and a series of specific proposals for how some of these shortcomings might begin to be addressed, are ready
for discussion with policy-makers. The final report has three main components: a systemic overview; nine thematic essays
by distinguished rapporteurs; and nearly 60 individual proposals by Global Agenda Councils, Industry Partner communities
and Young Global Leader Task Forces. These proposals to create or improve existing international cooperative structures
and arrangements address a wide range of international economic, social, environmental and security challenges. We invite
leaders from politics, industry, civil society and academia to debate, refine and adopt these ideas.

It is with immense gratitude that we thank our patron governments for having had the foresight and commitment to partner
with the World Economic Forum to make this process not only possible but also successful. Without their support and
guidance, the ambitious initiative would not have been possible.

I would also like to thank the Forum’s many communities for engaging enthusiastically in this exercise as well as the
Forum’s entire management and staff. This has been a cross-cutting effort that has drawn on nearly every aspect of our
capabilities and inspired us to pursue our mission of improving the state of the world with an even deeper sense of
commitment. Special thanks are due to Vice-Chairman Lord Malloch-Brown and Managing Director Rick Samans for their
co-leadership of the process, as well as Associate Director, Michele Petochi.

Particularly in the wake of the global economic crisis, we need to rethink our values, redesign our systems, and rebuild our
institutions to make them more proactive and strategic, more inclusive, more reflective of the new geo-political and geo-
economic circumstances, and more reflective of inter-generational accountability and responsibility.

The Global Redesign process has provided an informal working laboratory or marketplace for a number of good policy
ideas and partnership opportunities in these respects that governments, international organizations, companies and other
institutions may wish to consider incorporating into their own initiatives. We have sought to expand international governance
discussions beyond the important work being done in the G20 on financial supervision and macroeconomic cooperation,
encouraging the wider international community to take more pre-emptive and coordinated action on the full range of risks
that have been accumulating in the international system.


As the report emphasizes, the efforts of all stakeholders are needed to adapt the international system to our increasingly
interconnected and interdependent world. I congratulate the Forum communities that have contributed to this report for
having set such a positive example for the world in this regard.

Many of the ideas and proposals presented in this report are of a far-reaching nature and require strong global consensus
and cooperation. It would be presumptuous to assume that all of these ideas will be immediately integrated into the global
decision-making process. Therefore the Global Redesign Initiative should not be seen as an end in itself but as the
beginning of a sustained process to adapt and better prepare the global system for the challenges of the 21st century.

I can give to all those who worked so hard to make this initiative a reality the promise that the Forum will remain a forceful
catalyst for rethinking our values, redesigning our systems and rebuilding our institutions.

Klaus Schwab
Executive Chairman
Geneva, May 2010


Executive Summary

Everybody’s Business: Strengthening International Cooperation in a More Interdependent
World

Global Redesign Executive Summary

Over the past two decades, the international community has become much more deeply interconnected and
interdependent due in large part to its rapid technological progress and economic development and integration.

International institutions and arrangements are now out of step in important respects with a world in which
economic strength and political influence are much more widely dispersed among countries and regions,
national governments are no longer such dominant intermediaries of relations among nations, and
socioeconomic and technological advancement has created a new set of interrelated risks and opportunities
for progress.

For several months in 2008-09, when the full extent of the world economy’s systemic weaknesses and
cooperative deficits were laid bare, there was a popular and diplomatic consensus on the need to make
fundamental changes. But as the world economy has begun to recover from recession and governments have
begun to focus on fiscal and social strategies to exit from the crisis, the appetite for fundamental improvements
in international governance and cooperation appears to have waned.

The international community has paid a severe price for its complacency about systemic financial and
macroeconomic risks that were well publicized but nevertheless allowed to accumulate for too long. Other
serious global risks are accumulating, awaiting a proactive cooperative response. It would be a serious, historic
error to revert to complacency and return to business as usual in international relations.

How can the architecture of global cooperation be redesigned not only to accommodate our deeper
interdependence but also to capitalize on it? That is the essence of the question the World Economic Forum
posed to all of its communities over the past year, including particularly its 76 multistakeholder Global Agenda
Councils. The Forum challenged them to respond with concrete proposals. This combined report –
encompassing a systemic overview, a set of nine thematic summaries by distinguished rapporteurs, and 58
individual proposals developed by many Councils, Industry Partner communities and Young Global Leader
(YGL) Task Forces – is the result of that global, multistakeholder thought process.

The ideas and proposals that have emerged from the Global Redesign process suggest that very substantial
progress can be achieved by:

1) Redefining the international system as constituting a wider, multifaceted system of global
cooperation in which intergovernmental legal frameworks and institutions are embedded as a
core, but not the sole and sometimes not the most crucial, component

2) Strengthening the state-based part of the system where its rules and capacities are inadequate,
while expanding the geometry of cooperation to capitalize on the wider availability of non-state
expertise and resources

3) Deploying this augmented institutional geometry in a pragmatic, results-oriented push to
accelerate progress on individual priority challenges

4) Undertaking similarly practical, targeted initiatives to strengthen legitimacy, participation and
accountability in the state-based core of the system

5) Expanding the constituency for international cooperation by cultivating a shift in values within
societies and professions grounded in a deeper appreciation of the implications of global
interdependence for the achievement of their objectives


These five steps constitute a blueprint for renovating international cooperation in an era of increasingly complex
interdependence, rendering it both more effective and legitimate. The many concrete proposals made by the
Forum’s Global Agenda Councils, Industry Partner communities and Young Global Leader Task Forces span all
of these areas and each of the domains of economic and social, environmental and security cooperation (see
the summaries of selected proposals below).

Multidimensional Cooperation
When states were the overwhelmingly dominant actors on the world stage and major policy decisions were
commonly decided by a limited number of them, progress on international cooperation tended to be measured
by the establishment of new intergovernmental legal frameworks and institutions. But the Global Redesign
proposals suggest that efforts today to strengthen international cooperation will increasingly need to have a
wider focus and apply multiple tools: creating new international law and institutions; upgrading the mandate
and capacity of existing international institutions; integrating non-governmental expertise into the formulation of
policy frameworks, be they formal (legal) or informal (voluntary or public-private); and integrating non-
governmental resources into policy implementation.

This is both because a larger cast of politically influential states makes it harder to attain multilateral agreement
on universal frameworks, and because private and other civil society resources are needed to match the scale
of many global challenges. While new international laws and institutions are often desirable – and indeed many
have been proposed as part of this process – they are not always essential for major progress to be made.
And even where they can be achieved, their effective implementation may well depend on whether they are
linked with these other practical elements.

But having a bigger toolkit is not enough; we need to know how to use it. The wider global cooperation system
that is available to strengthen progress on any given issue consists of four modular building blocks that can be
applied in partial and different combinations to different problems:
• High-level political commitments and objectives
• Multilateral legal frameworks and institutions
• Plurilateral, often multistakeholder, coalitions of the willing and able
• Information metrics to assist with anticipating risks, shaping priorities and benchmarking performance

A key lesson of the Global Redesign process is that the way to strengthen results on a given problem is to
explore the practical opportunities that exist to construct or strengthen building blocks in each of these
dimensions, seeing them as a system and therefore seeking to cultivate a positive feedback loop of momentum
among them. The challenges of scale, information and coherence inherent in deep interdependence imply that,
if the international community focuses its cooperation on only one of these components of progress, it is much
more likely to be disappointed with the results.

Available Building Blocks to
Strengthen International Cooperation

High-level
political commitments and objectives

Plurilateral, often
Multilateral legal
multistakeholder,
frameworks and
coalitions of the
institutions willing and able

Information metrics to help anticipate risks,
shape priorities and benchmark performance


Particularly when the road to stronger multilateral rules is impracticable, a strategy to construct or strengthen a
number of these building blocks in parallel is likely to be the most effective way to accelerate progress. By
attacking problems pragmatically on several fronts, such a multidimensional (as opposed to purely multilateral)
approach to international cooperation has the potential to generate both additional results on the ground and
political momentum.

Multidimensionality, rather than multilateralism alone, is the strategy that emerges from the work of the Global
Redesign process for achieving a breakthrough in progress on global warming. It is also the approach
proposed to achieve much stronger results on several other critical global challenges, including Oceans,
Education, Nuclear Proliferation, Health, and Employment and Social Protection.

A New Stakeholder Paradigm of International Governance
Strengthened international cooperation and governance is not just a matter of institutional arrangements and
incentives. It is also a matter of values. The international system requires an upgrade not only in its functional
institutional architecture but also in societal institutions that have the potential to inculcate values consistent
with humanity’s interconnectedness and interdependence within professional disciplines and communities.

The time has come for a new stakeholder paradigm of international governance analogous to that embodied in
the stakeholder theory of corporate governance on which the World Economic Forum itself was founded. The
1945 UN Charter explicitly identifies people, or society at large, as the ultimate stakeholder of international
governance, notwithstanding the role sovereign states play as the central actors in the international system.
The state-based core of the system needs to be adapted to a more complex, bottom-up world in which non-
governmental actors have become a more significant force. But what is also required is a corresponding sense
of ownership in the health of the international system by these very non-state stakeholders, which until now
have tended, with the notable exception of certain NGOs, to leave such matters entirely to their national
governments.

Most importantly, these institutions should cultivate among their leaders before they become leaders a keener
awareness of how the achievement of their objectives can be heavily influenced by conditions in various areas
of the international system. Those who educate and select leaders of political, business, academic, religious,
media and other social institutions, particularly graduate education programmes and boards of directors and
human resources departments, have the greatest responsibility in this respect. Their curricula and senior talent
development and promotion policies must reflect that they are cultivating not only leaders of functional
organizations but also stewards of the international system and the contribution of their professional disciplines
thereto. In support, societies should measure better what they value and use such information to stimulate
ongoing dialogue among the leaders about the challenge of integrating such values into the decisions they
respectively face. Several concrete proposals are made in this respect.

Achieving Systemic Improvement in International Cooperation
Renovating the international system in these five ways would enable the international community to accelerate
progress on many individual global challenges, sometimes dramatically so. By widening our conception of the
modes and means of cooperation available in our more complex, bottom-up world, and applying this
expanded cooperative geometry in a pragmatic, targeted push for results, we can achieve transformational
change even when an expansion of universal norms and legal obligations is not politically feasible. At the same
time, by opening our international institutions to more direct interaction with citizens and their elected
representatives, while cultivating a greater sense of personal and professional responsibility among them for the
health of the international system, we can enlarge the political constituency for international cooperation around
the globe.

But many of these individual challenges are deeply interrelated. Progress on one depends on progress on one
or more of the others. It is therefore necessary but not sufficient to improve the system’s capacity to boost
performance on individual problems. We also need special mechanisms to mobilize systemwide progress,
including:


The Ongoing Role of the G20 Leaders Process. The G20 represents the international community’s best
potential mechanism for mobilizing systemic leaps forward in international cooperation. It enjoys considerable
goodwill due to the success of its crisis-response measures and greater diversity than the G8. However, there
is a risk this goodwill will dissipate among the rest of the so-called G192 if its ongoing purpose and relationship
with the United Nations and specialized international organizations are not clarified soon.

The G20 is an informal group and should remain so in order to preserve its intimacy, wherein lies much of its
potential to enhance systemwide effectiveness. However, it needs to be embedded explicitly in the formal
multilateral system in order to demonstrate more clearly its commitment to acting in the general interest and
being accountable to the entire international community rather than simply to the national populations of its
member countries. The report proposes a number of steps to anchor the G20 in the multilateral system as well
as rationalize participation and inculcate a sense of systemic stewardship within it.

The best reason to continue the G20 Leader process is to create regular opportunities for political
breakthroughs on issues that ministers are unable to resolve within the scope of their particular authority. But it
will take more than principles and peer review discussions to rebalance the world economy and render global
economic growth more sustainable and inclusive.

The UNFCCC climate change, WTO Doha Development Agenda, IMF and World Bank reform, Millennium
Development Goal funding, and global macroeconomic rebalancing discussions are all apparently unable to
progress much further within their respective ministerial processes. Yet in combination, they would yield major
net benefits for developing, emerging and advanced countries alike.

It is therefore time for G20 leaders to muster the political imagination necessary to assemble a package deal
providing each with the essential victory that permits additional flexibility to be shown in areas of comparable
political importance for colleagues. Leaders should dedicate themselves in 2010-11 to taking such a
synchronized, systemic leap forward in international cooperation.

The key to achieving such a win-win-win-win package of breakthroughs in international macroeconomic, trade,
climate and development cooperation lies less in finding new formulations in negotiating text and more in
constructing and properly resourcing a number of crucial, related institutional building blocks that can build
diplomatic confidence by showing additional progress on the ground. Many of these have been proposed as
part of the Global Redesign process. If G20 leaders are able to deliver an early harvest of multidimensional
progress along these lines, then they will have done much to justify their institutionalization and legitimization as
the de facto steering committee of the world economy and its principal institutions.

Upgrading Global Environmental Governance. There is a further opportunity to achieve a step change in
global environmental governance by focusing not on the traditional agenda (UN structure, new legal
frameworks) but on a new agenda to build the kind of practical, often public-private, mechanisms that can
accelerate the transformation of energy and industrial systems even in the absence of agreement on new
multilateral legal obligations. Various Global Agenda Councils, Industry Partner communities and YGL Task
Forces have independently put forward significant proposals to build enabling institutions, install information
systems, mobilize major coalitions and, in some cases, extend international law in such areas as marine life and
coral conservation; energy efficiency; low-carbon technology development; deforestation; safe drinking water
and sanitation; investor, corporate and consumer carbon metrics; sustainable consumption and energy
security.

The next big opportunity for progress in global environmental governance is to create this wider global
cooperation system – to construct major, new pieces of enabling architecture aimed at scaling public and
private action on each of these interrelated environmental challenges. This, rather than negotiating new
principles and legal instruments, should be the main objective of the Rio+20 Summit which the United Nations
will organize in 2012. Such a strategy holds the prospect of producing tangible achievements comparable in


significance to those agreed in Rio. As such, it would provide a justification for world leaders to attend in
numbers not seen since that conference and the UN Millennium Summit in 2000.

Enabling More Proactive and Integrated Cooperation. Even as relevant sources of expertise and capacity
have multiplied and global risks and challenges have become more interconnected, our methods for assessing
and responding to them remain highly fragmented among different ministries, countries, industries, professional
and academic disciplines, specialized international organizations, etc. This fragmentation makes it more difficult
for all of these institutions to remain confident that the information on which they base decisions is
comprehensive, consistent and current. It creates a bias within the international system for partial and reactive
responses to global challenges that require a more integrated and proactive approach.

Better means of connecting insight around the world on an ongoing, self-organizing basis could enable more
coherent and proactive responses to global challenges. Such multidimensional, real-time connectivity of
expertise has been constrained by the natural limitations of physical meetings, dedicated e-mail lists and
bilateral conversations requiring advance scheduling. No network exists that is sufficiently interdisciplinary,
interactive and international to overcome these barriers to collective intelligence and action. However,
communications technology has evolved to the point where this should now be feasible, and a potential
framework is proposed for discussion.

Conclusion
In 1944, well before the end of the war but after the tide had turned, a series of international discussions were
held at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC and Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to design the post-war
international security and economic architecture. Governments assembled teams of people with governmental,
academic and business backgrounds to engage in sustained discussions aimed at drawing fundamental
lessons about the failures of the pre-war cooperation and designing new, more robust institutional
arrangements.

Now that the tide appears to have turned in the global economic crisis, governments, companies and other
civil society institutions should engage in an effort to absorb the larger meaning of the changes that have
transformed the international community during the past generation and rendered much of its cooperative
architecture not fully fit for the purpose of addressing risks that are accumulating in many domains.

They are more likely to succeed in doing so if they take a practical, multidimensional approach, focusing on the
“how” rather than merely the “what”. The international system requires a sustained process of innovation and
institutional deepening that capitalizes on the full range of available modes and means of cooperation to make
progress where it is most needed and feasible.

International cooperation is now everybody’s business. The efforts of all stakeholders are required to adapt the
international system to our more interdependent world.


Rapporteurs

1. Creating a Values Framework – John DeGioia, President, Georgetown University, USA
2. Building Sustained Economic Growth – Robert Lawrence, Albert L. Williams Professor of Trade and
Investment, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, USA
3. Strengthening the International Monetary and Financial System – David Daokui Li, Director and
Mansfield Freeman Professor of Economics, Center for China in the World Economy (CCWE), Tsinghua
University, People’s Republic of China; and Suzanne Nora Johnson, Trustee, Carnegie Institution for
Science, USA
4. Creating Employment, Eradicating Poverty and Improving Social Welfare – John McArthur, Chief
Executive Officer, Millennium Promise, USA; and Dennis Snower, President, Kiel Institute for the World
Economy, Germany
5. Managing and Mitigating Global Risks – Ian Goldin, Director, James Martin 21st Century School,
and Professorial Fellow, Balliol College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
6. Ensuring Health for All – Peter Piot, Professor and Director, Institute of Global Health, Imperial
College London, United Kingdom; David E. Bloom, Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics
and Demography, Harvard School of Public Health, USA; and Peter C. Smith, Professor, Health Policy,
Imperial College London, United Kingdom
7. Enhancing Global Security – Lilia Shevtsova, Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, Carnegie Moscow Center, Russian Federation; and Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Senior Non-resident
Fellow, Brookings Institution, USA
8. Ensuring Sustainability – Ashok Khosla, Chairman, Development Alternatives, India; and Caio Koch-
Weser, Vice-Chairman, Deutsche Bank Group, Deutsche Bank, United Kingdom
9. Building Effective Institutions in an Empowered Society – Ngaire Woods, Professor of
International Political Economy, University of Oxford, United Kingdom; and Kishore Mahbubani, Dean,
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore


Selected Proposals

Economic Cooperation

• The Council on the International Monetary System has proposed a significant strengthening of the
global financial safety net, including through reforms of the International Monetary Fund’s Articles of
Agreement that would authorize the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) at the
request of the Managing Director to issue Special Drawing Rights for the provision of emergency liquidity
in times of financial distress.

• The Councils on Global Investment Flows and Systemic Financial Risk have proposed the creation of a
global systemic financial risk watchdog with the necessary authority to sound and compel a
response to alarm bells, while respecting the regulatory purview of national authorities and building on
the institutional framework that has been constructed in the wake of the financial crisis.

• The Financial Services Industry Partner Rethinking Risk Management Project has proposed a new
public-private financial risk information repository that would improve the aggregation of
systemically relevant data across the global financial system for the benefit of regulators.

• The Council on Trade has proposed the establishment of a World Trade Organization protocol on
plurilateral trade agreements and a review of regional free trade and preference agreements to
strengthen guidelines ensuring their consistency with the long-term vitality of the multilateral trading
system.

• The Council on Employment & Social Protection has proposed a major expansion of the capacity of
the International Labour Organization and multilateral development banks to help developing
countries strengthen domestic institutions relevant to employment generation and wage progress as well
as the provision of basic retirement, health and unemployment insurance systems, as envisioned by the
Decent Work Agenda.

• The Council on the Skills Gap, in consultation with the Councils on Migration and Talent & Diversity, has
proposed a new, structured public-private process to identify and encourage the replication of model
national labour migration policies.

• The Council on Benchmarking Progress in Society has proposed an international initiative to strengthen
the quality and broaden the application of benchmarking metrics and other evidence-based
policy-making tools as a means of improving the demand for and accountability of performance
against economic reform objectives.


Selected Proposals

Development Cooperation

• The Health Cluster Rapporteurs and Council on Global Healthcare Systems & Cooperation have put
forward a set of proposals to strengthen global health governance, including an annual multi-actor
Global Health Summit adjacent to the World Health Organization’s intergovernmental World Health
Assembly; a Partnership for Health Risk Accountability and Health Data Charter to create a more
rigorous analytical foundation for such planning; a strengthening of the normative and coordinating role
of the WHO and clearer division of labour among health agencies; and coalitions on specific challenges,
including on the malnutrition of under-two children, chronic diseases, and health workforce shortages.

• The Council on Education Systems has proposed to reformulate the governance and supporting
institutional architecture of the Education for All effort through a multistakeholder review of its
governance, financing and institutional capacity, including a call to action to G20 leaders to engage
education, development and finance ministries in the review, as well as a first set of targeted initiatives in
the areas of teacher training, North-South university cooperation, and informal learning.

• The Council on Humanitarian Assistance has proposed the creation of a new humanitarian business
model that emphasizes tri-sector national and regional partnerships to pre-emptively reduce disaster-
related risks and strengthen disaster response capabilities.

• The Councils on Nutrition and Food Security have proposed the creation of a Global Food, Agriculture
and Nutrition Redesign Initiative to provide an action-oriented strategy and set of high profile
partnerships to increase the diet quality of the poor and particularly the nutritional status of children
under the age of two.

• The Forum’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI) has proposed the creation of a new global
multistakeholder partnership to scale the “supply side” (i.e., business) commitment to a zero
tolerance policy with respect to bribery as a complement to official “demand side” efforts by
governments to strengthen policy in this respect.

• The Council on Fragile States has proposed creation of a dual-oversight agency where responsibility is
shared between state authorities and external funders in order to meet the urgent needs of the
population in fragile states through the delivery of essential social and economic services, while building
sustainable and accountable systems of public authority.


Selected Proposals

Sustainability Cooperation

• The Council on Ocean Governance and the YGL Task Force on Oceans have proposed a significant
expansion of Marine Protected Areas, including Large Ocean Reserves, as well as a formal
review of the adequacy of the Law of the Sea Treaty and Fish Stocks Agreement in view of the
ongoing degradation of major fisheries around the world. They also propose new mechanisms to
strengthen monitoring and enforcement and an Ocean Health Index to strengthen the information
available for setting priorities and tracking progress with respect to the protection of marine life.

• The Council on Sustainable Energy has proposed the creation of a sectoral free trade arrangement
for sustainable energy products and services that would eliminate tariffs and harmonize standards
as well as begin to discipline domestic fossil fuel subsidies.

• The Industry Partner Low-Carbon Prosperity Task Force has proposed the creation of:

➢ regional, public-private climate investment funds that leverage large-scale private institutional
capital flows into low-carbon energy systems in developing countries through the scaled application of
the public finance and risk mitigation tools of development finance institutions.

➢a global platform for intra-industry cooperation on energy efficiency via the addition of a private
sector dimension to the International Partnership for Energy Efficiency Cooperation (IPEEC), potentially
leading to a set of globally-accepted minimum energy efficiency standards on a limited but critical
range of energy intensive industrial and consumer goods.

➢ international public-private portfolios of up to 25 carbon capture and sequestration and 10
large-scale integrated smart grid demonstration projects across different regulatory regimes to
accelerate the development and commercial readiness of these promising technologies.

➢ support for the low-carbon growth of developing countries, including through the creation of a
Consultative Group for International Energy Research and a process to ready an operational
framework for large-scale avoided deforestation and land use change projects and programmes.

➢a Joint Project of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) with the business-NGO Climate
Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB) to develop a principles-based international financial
reporting standard for corporate climate disclosure suitable for ultimate adoption by regulators
as well as a similar public-private collaboration to create a global standard for the labelling of
emission footprints on consumer products, building on work also already under way in the non-
governmental community.

• The Industry Partner Water initiative and the Council on Water Security have proposed a new
international multistakeholder platform to help water-stressed countries and regions transform
the management of their water resources, supported by an unparalleled network of public, civil society
and private expertise.


Selected Proposals

Security Cooperation

• The Council on Terrorism & Weapons of Mass Destruction has proposed the creation of a Global
Alliance Against Nuclear Terrorism composed of states that commit to secure all nuclear weapons
and materials to a “gold standard” – beyond the reach of terrorists or thieves – by embedding principles
of “assured nuclear security” and “nuclear accountability”.

• The Council on Human Rights & Protection has proposed a series of steps to strengthen particularly the
non-military institutional capacity required for the effective prevention of mass atrocities under
the United Nations Responsibility to Protect framework.

• The Council on Energy Security has proposed the creation of a global public-private partnership to
manage the civilian nuclear fuel cycle as a means of reducing the risk of nuclear weapons
proliferation as additional countries engage in nuclear power generation.

• The Council on Energy Security has also proposed the creation of a new intergovernmental energy
security forum encompassing producing and consuming nations and providing a platform for the
identification of areas of potential cooperation on a wide range of energy challenges.

• The Council on Catastrophic Risks has proposed a high-level, inclusive dialogue including business,
political and civil society leaders to develop better institutions and networks to support global risk
management.

• The Council on the Future of the Internet has proposed new, self-associating ways of mobilizing
international cooperation to strengthen the resilience of the World Wide Web.

• The YGL Civic Eyes Task Force has proposed a new organization to strengthen domestic capacity to
replicate mass citizen participation in the monitoring and reporting of election irregularities
through crowdsourcing technologies.


Global Redesign Process Timeline
November 2010
India
Economic
November 2009 Summit
Summit on the January 2010 June 2010
November 2009
Global Agenda Annual Meeting Forum on
India Economic Summit
(Dubai) (Davos) East Asia
November 2010
June 2009 November 2009 December 2009 Summit on the
October 2010
Forum on Country Hearing Country Hearing May 2010 Global Agenda
Forum on
East Asia October 2009 Qatar Singapore Global Redesign (Dubai)
the Middle East
June 2009 Country Hearing Summit (Qatar)
May 2009 Forum on Switzerland
Forum on Africa
the Middle East
September 2009 January 2011
September 2010
Annual Meeting of February - May Annual Meeting
April 2009 Annual Meeting of
the New Champions Phase III: (Davos)
Forum on the New Champions
Finalization of Proposals
Latin America

April - December December - January May - January
January 2009
Phase I: Development of Proposals Phase II: Phase IV: Discussion, Refinement
Launch at the
by Global Agenda Councils, Industry Feedback April 2010 and Implementation with Governments
Annual Meeting
Partners and Y oung Global Leaders and Review Forum on and Other Actors
(Davos)
Latin America May 2010
Forum on
May 2010
Europe
Forum on
Africa

Everybody’s Business: Strengthening International
Cooperation in a More Interdependent World

By Richard Samans, Managing Director, Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive
Chairman, and Mark Malloch-Brown, Vice-Chairman, World Economic Forum

The world has changed. Over the past two decades, the international community has become much more deeply
interconnected and interdependent due in large part to its rapid technological progress and economic development and
integration.

Current preoccupations such as global warming, the recent systemic financial crisis and nuclear proliferation are
manifestations of this underlying transformation, which has been gathering force and appears to have reached a tipping
point in public and diplomatic consciousness in the past few years.

People around the world increasingly perceive their interconnectedness and interdependence. In principle, they recognize
that this implies a need for closer international cooperation. And yet governance at all levels – public and private as well as
global, national and local – is struggling to adapt.

The list of intergovernmental initiatives in which progress is halting or stalled outright is dismayingly long, including but not
limited to:
United Nations climate change negotiations
World Trade Organization Doha Development Agenda
Millennium Development Goal funding
G20 financial supervision reforms
Non-Proliferation Treaty reforms
UN Security Council reform
Bretton Woods institution voting reform
Macroeconomic cooperation to redress global economic imbalances

National and local governments are consumed by social and political challenges at home as they contend with crisis-related
economic slowdowns and fiscal deficits. The financial industry has just experienced one of its worst governance failures in
history, resulting in an enormous privatization of gains and socialization of losses with which societies will be coping for
years to come.

The international system has reached an evolutionary crossroads. At best, it can be The world has paid a severe price
said to be experiencing natural growing pains as it adapts to new circumstances. At for its complacency about systemic
worst, it is in full crisis, facing the prospect that further shortfalls of cooperation will
financial and macroeconomic risks
generate political tensions that degrade the international order which was
painstakingly constructed out of the ashes of conflict in the mid-20th century. that were well publicized but
nevertheless allowed to accumulate
A new era of international relations characterized by more complex interdependence for too long. Many other serious
has dawned. The challenge for this generation of leaders is to muster the imagination
global risks are accumulating,
and will necessary to update and upgrade international cooperative structures and
arrangements accordingly. awaiting a proactive cooperative
response.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 breakdown in the international financial
markets, the international community appeared to be rising to this challenge. A
consensus emerged across the public and private sectors that deep reforms were needed in many aspects of international
cooperation. This was reflected in the historic expansion of the G8 Leaders process to 20 countries and the commitment
expressed by such leaders in London to “lay the foundation for a fair and sustainable world economy [and] . . . to build an
inclusive, green, and sustainable recovery.”1 But as the world economy has begun to recover from recession and
governments have begun to focus on fiscal and social strategies to exit from the crisis, the appetite for fundamental
improvements in international governance and cooperation appears to have waned.

The world has paid a severe price for its complacency about systemic financial and macroeconomic risks that were well
publicized but nevertheless allowed to accumulate for too long. Many other serious global risks are accumulating, awaiting
a proactive cooperative response. It would be a serious, historic error to revert to complacency and return to business as
usual in international relations.


For a moment in 2008-09, the international community was seized with the transformational nature of our times. It must
hold on to that moment of possibility, consolidate its considerable collective accomplishment in containing the crisis, and
renew its earlier commitment to renovate the international system.

The revolution that is required is in How can the architecture of global cooperation be redesigned not only to
our conception of the international accommodate our deeper interdependence but also to capitalize on it? That is
the essence of the question the World Economic Forum posed to all of its
system – in our understanding of the communities over the past year, including particularly its 76 multistakeholder
additional modes of cooperation Global Agenda Councils. The Forum challenged them to respond with concrete
and sources of capability available proposals. This combined report – encompassing this systemic overview, a set
in a more interconnected and of nine thematic summaries by distinguished rapporteurs, and 58 individual
proposals developed by many Councils, Industry Partner communities and
interdependent world. Young Global Leader (YGL) Task Forces – is the result of that global,
multistakeholder thought process.

The proposals that have emerged from these interdisciplinary deliberations demonstrate that a dramatic improvement in
global cooperation is entirely achievable on the big, individual challenges humanity is facing as well as across the
international system as a whole. But no “Big Bang” demolition and replacement of the existing international architecture is
required. Rather, the revolution that is required is in our conception of the international system – in our understanding of the
additional modes of cooperation and sources of capability available in a more interconnected and interdependent world.
This begins with a fuller appreciation of the extent to which the international community itself has changed in the past 20
years.

A World Transformed

Many of the challenges now bedevilling international institutions and arrangements are rooted in the profound economic,
technological, social and political changes that have occurred over the course of just a single generation.

Emerging economies have become a global force. In the 1970s and 1980s, industrial output was almost entirely
concentrated in the United States, European Community and Japan. Since then, the share represented by middle-income
developing countries has doubled, reflecting particularly the faster pace of economic growth in Asia. In the 1990s, average
annual growth in the G7 was 2.2%. In Asia, the figure was 7.6% – with 6.1% in India and 11.54% in China.2 In this decade,
emerging economies have continued to grow more than twice as fast on average as those of advanced industrialized
countries.3

International economic integration has deepened dramatically. The Soviet Union’s disintegration, China’s shift towards
market-oriented policies and entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), and India’s economic reforms and greater
openness have had the effect of adding over a billion people to the global workforce.4 World merchandise trade has tripled,
growing at twice the rate of world GDP, with developing nations now accounting for 38%, up from 23% 20 years ago.5

The global middle class has mushroomed. As a result of rapid growth and integration, emerging economies have added
over 400 million middle class consumers to the world economy. This number has been growing by about 70 million per
year, including about 20 million per year outside of China and India.6 It has been estimated that middle-income countries
could account for as much as 57% of global GDP by 2050, up from 31% today.7

The world’s capital markets have become much more interconnected. Since 1975, international capital flows have
increased more than eightfold in volume,8 rising from roughly 5% to 20% of global GDP.9 In contrast to the 1970s, when
the exchange rates of major economies were fixed and international capital movements tightly regulated, average daily
turnover in global foreign exchange markets was estimated by the Bank for International Settlements at US$ 4 trillion as of
April 2007, about 40 times greater than the value of current account (trade) transactions.

Societies, too, have become more interconnected, driven by extraordinary technological progress, widespread deregulation
and corresponding decreases in telecommunications and travel costs. On average, international calling rates in OECD
countries fell by 56% between 1993 and 2003.10 For example, the cost of a three-minute call from the US to France
dropped from US$ 4.14 in 1988 to as little as US$ 0.06 today. As a result, international telephone traffic increased by 125%
between 1997 and 2006.11


The Internet is now used by nearly a quarter of the world’s 6.7 billion people, a figure that grew by 743% between 1998
and 2008.12 And between 2000 and 2009, cell phone penetration rose from 12% to 60% of the world’s population, or
more than 4 billion users. Brazil, Russia, India and China alone have more than 1.3 billion cell phone subscribers.13

The physical interaction of people from different countries has also expanded dramatically. From 1990 to 2006, worldwide
tourism arrivals grew by an average of 3.5% per year to reach a record high of 845 million. This growth has been widely
distributed. The Asia-Pacific region’s share rose from 17.4% to 24.7%.14 In Sub-Saharan Africa, international arrivals
increased by approximately 8% a year – from 6.8 million to 23.6 million. In China, they grew almost 10% annually.15

Migration has increased. Between 1990 and 2010, the number of migrants worldwide rose by 38%, from about 155 million
to 214 million.16 And since 1975, the number of international students has grown almost three and a half fold.17

Cities have exploded. The urban population today (roughly 3.3 billion) is far larger than the total global population of only 50
years ago.18 This shift has been most dramatic in developing countries. By 2015, demographers predict that there will be
59 cities in Africa with populations between 1 and 5 million. In Latin America and the Caribbean, there will be 65; in Asia,
253.19

Decades of economic development and population growth have degraded the environment on a planetary scale. According
to the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, rates of species extinction in modern times are 100 to 1,000 times higher
than average rates estimated from the fossil record. Harvest pressure has exceeded maximum sustainable levels of
exploitation in one-quarter of all wild fisheries and is likely to exceed this limit in most other wild fisheries in the near
future.20 Water scarcity is an accelerating condition for roughly 1-2 billion people worldwide, with per capita levels of water
availability having declined from 11,300 to about 5,600 cubic metres per person per year between 1960 and 2000.21

The effects of climate change on ecosystems have also become more apparent, especially in polar regions, where, on
average, temperatures are now warmer than at any time in the last 400 years and the Antarctic peninsular is one of the
most rapidly warming regions on the planet; in mountains, where there has been widespread glacier retreat and loss of
snowpack; and in coastal systems, where coral reefs in particular have been affected by sea temperature warming and
increased carbon dioxide concentrations.

Finally, political influence has become less concentrated as economies and societies have developed and integrated. In the
1970s and 1980s, diplomacy was dominated by three large blocs of countries: the West and its liberal democratic and
other allies; the Soviet Union and its communist and other allies; and non-aligned countries. Today, as the recent climate,
trade and Security Council expansion negotiations have demonstrated, the playing field has become much more complex
and difficult to navigate. Security rapporteurs Lilia Shevtsova and Jean-Marie Guéhenno have captured this shift in their
observation that the international community is now characterized by “asymmetric multipolarity”.

A Comparatively Static International System

In contrast to these profound changes, the basic infrastructure of international economic, security, social and environmental
cooperation largely reflects conditions that prevailed in the earlier era in which it was designed. International institutions and
arrangements are now out of step in important respects with an international community in which economic strength and
political influence are much more widely dispersed among countries and regions, national governments are no longer such
dominant intermediaries of relations among nations, and socioeconomic and technological advancement has created a new
set of interrelated risks and opportunities for progress.

Much of the ordering of economic, social and even political activity among countries now occurs at a sub-state, highly
disaggregated level. Private sector actors dominate international commerce and finance. There has been an explosion of
grass roots international interaction through increased travel and educational exchanges, transnational civil society activities,
and traditional as well as interactive electronic media. Science and technology are advancing at a pace and interdisciplinary
pattern that far outstrip consideration among experts and officials of the corresponding risks and required ethical and
governance frameworks.

This increasingly complex interconnectedness and interdependence poses major challenges to institutions and
arrangements designed for a world in which there were a limited number of influential countries, the state thoroughly
dominated international relations, and cross-border threats were mainly political in nature and could therefore be addressed
by national governments acting alone or in limited groups.


The modern international system has three main architectural features that were built in stages, one on top of the other. The
first and most fundamental is the nation state as the primary instrument of international relations. It is customary to locate
the start of the state system in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia establishing peace in Europe after decades of religious strife
and warfare. It was there that the foundations were laid for a global conversation based on universal national sovereignty,
each political territory settling the religious question on its own terms. However, the “nation state” was ultimately
consolidated as the predominant expression of sovereignty only in the 19th century, and the promise of statehood itself was
realized for most of the world only in the 20th. To this day, it is common to consider national governments as the only
legitimate actor in international policy-making processes.

The second primary feature is alliances among major nation states. This evolution in the state-based system is associated
with the 1815 Congress of Vienna, in which the major European powers negotiated an end to two decades of war and
redrew the continent’s political map. The major Cold War alliances and many of today’s intergovernmental arrangements
can be thought of as latter-day applications of the kind of interstate diplomacy that stabilized Europe in the early 19th
century (e.g., the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and ASEAN+3,
the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, etc).

The third main architectural feature is the formal multilateral United Nations system. It was largely constructed in the 1940s
in the aftermath of World War II but had post-World War I antecedents such as the League of Nations and International
Labour Organization (ILO). The Dumbarton Oaks, Bretton Woods and San Francisco conferences of 1944-45 drew up
plans for the construction of a wide range of formal universal norms and specialized institutions to advance cooperation in
many aspects of economics, security and society. These have generally been very successful and are what most people
think of today as the international system.

These three main elements of the system will remain important pillars of international relations for a long time to come. But
they have been overtaken in key regards by the sweeping economic, political, technological and social changes of the past
generation. In particular, these transformations have created problems of legitimacy and effectiveness in the world’s
cooperative architecture.

Voting and leadership in the major institutions have yet to adapt adequately to the rise of Asian and other emerging powers,
leading some of these countries to question their legitimacy at times and emphasize instead regional or unilateral
approaches. And a global population that is more informed about global challenges is by definition more conscious that its
priorities are not being translated adequately into action. This fuels popular frustration and cynicism about whether
international institutions genuinely reflect popular will and are fully accountable.

At the same time, the proliferation of influential actors has complicated efforts to gain agreement on common, multilateral
approaches even as the problems of a more crowded, polluted, unequal and vulnerable world demand greater attention. As
a result, progress is lagging on many priority challenges, including a number of those for which political leaders have agreed
on clear goals.

The rapporteurs discuss these priority shortfalls in cooperation in their respective thematic chapters. The larger conclusion
to be drawn is that more complex interdependence has not only made it more politically challenging for our multilateral
institutions to deliver effective international cooperation. It has also exposed important structural weaknesses. In particular,
the increased number, interrelationship and disaggregated nature of the actors involved in many of these challenges have
revealed serious limitations of scale, information and coherence.

Scale. Many of the most crucial collective action problems the world faces, such as poverty alleviation, income inequality
and climate change, require resources to be mobilized on a scale that far exceeds those of governments and international
organizations. Success is possible only by using limited official resources in ways that leverage much larger private and civil
society flows of funds and capabilities. But while experimentation with individual public-private and multistakeholder
partnerships has flourished over the past decade, including in many international organizations, they continue to play an
incremental, even experimental, role in the international system rather than a systematic one. For this to change, policy-
making processes and institutional structures themselves will need to be adapted and perhaps even fundamentally
repositioned with this in mind.

Information. Rapid change and the greater diversity of actors make it more difficult for governments and intergovernmental
institutions to remain confident that the information on which they base decisions is comprehensive, consistent and current.
They need to adapt by casting a much wider net, systematically embedding themselves in diverse, often informal, networks
of expertise. Enabled by new modes of virtual interaction, such blending of formal and informal sources of information can


enhance ex ante understanding of threats and challenges as well as ex post accountability of performance against agreed
policy objectives. Here again, the challenge for today’s institutions is to make the transition from ad hoc experimentation to
institutionalization.

Coherence. Deeper interdependence poses an inherent challenge to a system that is highly segmented in the sense that it
is characterized by specialized agencies and corresponding intergovernmental processes with responsibility for specific
issue areas. The thematically stove-piped nature of our system has often been criticized for producing fragmented, partial
and sometimes even incoherent responses to problems.

RENOVATING THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM
These deficiencies in legitimacy and effectiveness exacerbate each other. The more disconnected or disenfranchised certain
countries and citizens feel from international institutions, the less they invest themselves in the success of the institutions’
endeavours. The larger the shortfall in results in relation to goals, the greater is the tendency towards such detachment.

In short, the international system is in need of a new round of major structural renovations to enable it to better
accommodate an international community that has been transformed over the past generation. The new architectural
features must be designed not only to accommodate the arrival of a new set of
informed and empowered actors on the world stage, thereby enhancing the The international system is in need
system’s diplomatic and popular legitimacy. They must also aim to harness the full
potential of these actors to contribute to the system’s effectiveness in achieving of a new round of major structural
results. renovations to enable it to better
accommodate an international
Every architectural renovation project starts with the identification by the owner of community that has been
a number of core specifications. This is to ensure that the process remains guided
by his or her fundamental interests. Fortunately, the core design specifications for transformed over the past
international governance that were established during the international system’s generation.
last round of major renovations remain as valid today as ever.

The ultimate “owner” of international governance is identified in the first words of
the 1945 United Nations Charter: “We the peoples.” Although the Charter was signed by states, it clearly positions the
individual rather than the state as the ultimate stakeholder of international cooperation. This point is also underscored by its
strong emphasis on “fundamental human rights”, which were enshrined three years later in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, the preamble of which proclaims: “the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of
speech and belief and freedom from fear and want . . . as the highest aspiration of the common people.”

Similarly, the Charter states that the purposes of the United Nations system are to:
maintain international peace and security
develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of
peoples
achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian
character
be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends

In other words, the fundamental aim of the international system is to help advance the physical and material security of
people. Sometimes threats or obstacles thereto require a response that is broader than that which can be organized by
local, national or regional authorities. International cooperation is an instrument, complementary to local and national
instruments, to strengthen human security and possibility rather than to build remote and bureaucratic supranational
structures for their own sake. International governance is not an end in itself.
International cooperation is an
instrument, complementary to local If the fundamental reason to renovate international institutions and arrangements
and national instruments, to is to strengthen their contribution to the advancement of human security, then
the specific goals of the exercise must be to correct or at least significantly
strengthen human security and narrow the shortcomings of legitimacy and effectiveness that have been exposed
possibility rather than to build in the system in the years since its last major renovation. The ideas and
remote and bureaucratic proposals that have emerged from the Global Redesign process suggest that
supranational structures for their very substantial progress can be achieved in these two respects if we:
own sake.


1) Redefine the international system as constituting a wider, multifaceted system of global cooperation in
which intergovernmental legal frameworks and institutions are embedded as a core, but not the sole and
sometimes not the most crucial, component

2) Strengthen the state-based part of the system where its rules and capacities are inadequate, while
expanding the geometry of cooperation to capitalize on the wider availability of non-state expertise and
resources

3) Deploy this augmented institutional geometry in a results-oriented push to accelerate progress on individual
priority challenges

4) Undertake similarly practical, targeted initiatives to strengthen legitimacy, participation and accountability in
the state-based core of the system

5) Expand the constituency for international cooperation by cultivating a shift in values within societies and
professions grounded in a deeper appreciation of the implications of global interdependence for the
achievement of their objectives

These five steps constitute a blueprint for renovating and rejuvenating international These five steps constitute a
cooperation in an era of increasingly complex interdependence. As described in greater blueprint for renovating and
detail below, if the international community can progress on these five fronts, it will be in rejuvenating international
a much better position to tackle the toughest challenges and seize the brightest
cooperation in an era of
opportunities facing it in the 21st century.
increasingly complex
1) Redefining the international system interdependence.

Decades of economic development, integration of product and service markets, cross-border travel and new technologies
enabling communication and virtual interaction have created a world that is much more multifaceted and bottom-up than
top-down. The international community has become not only more economically and environmentally interdependent, but
also more interwoven in a socio-political sense. People around the globe increasingly perceive their interconnectedness and
seek ways to express themselves about it outside of formal national political structures. They have become more aware that
global problems require global trusteeship and efforts to solve problems solely through traditional political processes, often
characterized by the defence of national interests, may be inadequate in the face of critical global challenges.

Our state-centric international system needs to be adapted to an era of deeper global interdependence in which the big
challenges to human security increasingly span national borders, ministerial portfolios and stakeholders. Nation states and
intergovernmental structures will continue to play a central role in global decision-making. But they must be adapted to
today’s needs and conditions if they wish to preserve their effectiveness and legitimacy.

The first step is for governments and international organizations to conceive of themselves more explicitly as constituting
part of a much wider global cooperation system that has the potential to overcome the limitations of scale, information and
coherence from which they currently suffer. Indeed, they should work deliberately to cultivate such a system by anchoring
the preparation and implementation of their decisions more deeply in processes of interaction with interdisciplinary and
multistakeholder networks of relevant experts and actors. This will help transcend the silo and reactive thinking that are an
acknowledged weakness of the formal multilateral system. It will also help improve accountability and legitimacy.

The international system lacks adequate built-in incentives to focus disparate,
The first step is for governments and but relevant, resources and capabilities on common, complex challenges. The
international organizations to G20 is an important new instrument, but as a top-down mechanism it alone is
conceive of themselves more not sufficient to improve the effectiveness and legitimacy of the international
system. Big challenges need to be dealt with increasingly in a more inclusive,
explicitly as constituting part of a results-oriented and holistic fashion – i.e., through a “we the peoples” rather than
much wider global cooperation “we the states” approach to international governance and cooperation.
system that has the potential to
overcome the limitations of scale, It is in this sense that the traditional, state-based conception of the international
system requires redefinition. Deepened global cooperation along current lines is
information and coherence from necessary but not sufficient. A more multidimensional and inclusive approach to
which they currently suffer. setting norms and generating collective action is needed if we are to succeed in
addressing the market and public governance failures that have accompanied
globalization.


We can start by embedding our intergovernmental institutions and processes in wider processes and networks that permit
scaled and continuous interaction among all stakeholders and sources of expertise in global society in the search for better
solutions.

2) Strengthening the state-based part of the system while expanding the geometry of cooperation to capitalize
on the wider availability of non-state expertise and resources

The Forum’s Global Agenda Councils, Industry Partner communities and Young Global What would international
Leader Task Forces have proposed many specific ways in which global cooperation could cooperative structures look like
be improved. The Forum challenged them to think strategically and structurally rather in your field if they were
than incrementally based on their perception of current political feasibility. The specific
designed today with
question they were posed was: what would international cooperative structures look like
in your field if they were designed today with contemporary circumstances and contemporary circumstances and
challenges in mind rather than those that prevailed in the mid-20th century? challenges in mind rather than
those that prevailed in the mid-
These leading experts responded with proposals to improve the effectiveness of the
20th century?
international system in four basic ways:
Extending intergovernmental norms and legal frameworks
Reinforcing the capacity of intergovernmental institutions
Integrating non-governmental expertise to strengthen policy formulation
Integrating non-governmental resources to strengthen policy implementation

They have identified significant opportunities for boosting progress in all four of these ways in each of the areas of
economic, development, sustainability and security cooperation. For example:

Economic Cooperation
The Councils on Global Investment Flows and Systemic Financial Risk have proposed the creation of a global systemic
financial risk watchdog with the necessary authority to sound and compel a response to alarm bells, while respecting
the regulatory purview of national authorities and building on the international framework that has been constructed in the
wake of the financial crisis.

The Council on the International Monetary System has proposed a significant strengthening of the global financial
safety net, including through reforms of the International Monetary Fund’s Articles of Agreement that would authorize the
International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) at the request of the Managing Director to issue Special Drawing
Rights for the provision of emergency liquidity in times of financial distress.

The Financial Services Industry Partner Rethinking Risk Management Project22 has proposed a new public-private
financial risk information repository that would improve the aggregation of systemically relevant data across the
global financial system for the benefit of regulators.

The Council on Trade has proposed the establishment of a World Trade Organization protocol on plurilateral trade
agreements and a review of regional free trade and preference agreements to strengthen guidelines ensuring their
consistency with the long-term vitality of the multilateral trading system.

The Council on Employment & Social Protection has proposed enhancements to macroeconomic policy cooperation,
such as the Mutual Assessment Process related to the G20’s Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth,
aimed at introducing employment and living standards-related trends and policies as an explicit parameter of
analysis and discussion.

The Council on the Skills Gap, in consultation with the Councils on Migration and Talent & Diversity, has proposed a new,
structured public-private process to identify and encourage the replication of model national labour migration
policies.

The Council on Benchmarking Progress in Society has proposed an international initiative to strengthen the quality and
broaden the application of benchmarking metrics and other evidence-based policy-making tools as a means of
improving the demand for and accountability of performance against economic reform objectives.

The Council on the Future of Mining & Metals has proposed a multistakeholder process to draft a model framework for
Fair Mineral Development Agreements that would establish best practice regarding both the negotiating process for
and content of resource extraction agreements in developing countries.


Development Cooperation

The Health Cluster Rapporteurs, Peter Piot, David Bloom and Peter C. Smith and the Council on Global Healthcare
Systems & Cooperation have put forward a set of proposals to strengthen global health governance through
better integration of relevant information and actors, including a Partnership for Health Risk Accountability to
strengthen policy planning and resource allocation; a standing, informal forum to enhance coordination across
public, private, philanthropic, university and civil society health actors; and a strengthening of the capacity and
division of labour among international institutions.

The Council on Education Systems has proposed to reformulate the governance and supporting institutional
architecture of the Education for All effort through a multistakeholder review that involves G20 education,
development and finance ministries.

The Council on Education Systems has also proposed the creation of alternative innovative sources of
financing to resource national education plans drawn up by developing countries in connection with the
Education for All initiative as well as targeted initiatives in the areas of teacher training, North-South university
cooperation and informal learning.

The Council on Employment & Social Protection has proposed a major expansion of the capacity of the
International Labour Organization and multilateral development banks to help developing countries
strengthen domestic institutions relevant to employment generation and wage progress as well as the provision of
basic retirement, health and unemployment insurance systems, as envisioned by the Decent Work Agenda.

The Council on Humanitarian Assistance has proposed the creation of a new humanitarian business model that
emphasizes tri-sector national and regional partnerships to pre-emptively reduce disaster-related risks and
strengthen disaster response capabilities.

The Forum’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI) has proposed the creation of a new global
multistakeholder partnership to scale the “supply side” (i.e., business) commitment to a zero tolerance
policy with respect to bribery as a complement to official “demand side” efforts by governments to strengthen
policy in this respect.

The Councils on Nutrition and Food Security have proposed the creation of a Global Food, Agriculture and
Nutrition Redesign Initiative to provide an action-oriented strategy and set of high profile partnerships to
increase the diet quality of the poor and particularly the nutritional status of children under the age of two.

The YGL Global Responsibility Licensing Task Force and Council on the Intellectual Property System have
proposed a new initiative to expand access to intellectual property relevant to poverty alleviation and
humanitarian assistance while preserving protection for commercial uses.

The Council on Population Growth has proposed sharpening the mandate and strengthening the capacity of
the United Nations Population Fund so that it can more effectively lead and coordinate international efforts
related to population growth.

The Council on Fragile States has proposed creation of a dual-oversight agency where responsibility is shared
between state authorities and external funders in order to meet the urgent needs of the population in fragile states
through the delivery of essential social and economic services, while building sustainable and accountable systems
of public authority.

The Council on Poverty & Development Finance has proposed new means of improving dialogue and cooperation
among the overlapping public, private and civil society networks of aid funders and providers, including the
creation of a Global Aid Partnership for Innovation that would promote a yearly marketplace for the funding
and systematic evaluation of innovative approaches to development assistance.


Sustainability Cooperation

The Council on Ocean Governance and the YGL Task Force on Oceans have proposed a significant expansion
of Marine Protected Areas, including Large Ocean Reserves, as well as a formal review of the adequacy
of the Law of the Sea Treaty and Fish Stocks Agreement in view of the ongoing degradation of major
fisheries around the world.

The Council on Ocean Governance has also proposed the creation of an Ocean Health Index to strengthen the
information available for setting priorities and tracking progress with respect to the protection of marine life.

The Industry Partner Low-Carbon Prosperity Task Force has proposed the creation of:

regional, public-private climate investment funds that leverage large-scale private institutional capital flows
into low-carbon energy systems in developing countries through the scaled application of the public finance
and risk mitigation tools of development finance institutions.

international public-private portfolios of up to 25 carbon capture and sequestration and 10 large-
scale integrated smart grid demonstration projects across different regulatory regimes to accelerate the
development and commercial readiness of these promising technologies.

supporting processes and institutional capacity for the low-carbon growth plans that developing
countries are formulating in connection with the United Nations climate negotiations, including the creation of a
Consultative Group for International Energy Research and a process to ready an operational framework for
large-scale avoided deforestation and land use change projects and programmes.

a global platform for intra-industry cooperation on energy efficiency via the addition of a private sector
dimension to the International Partnership for Energy Efficiency Cooperation (IPEEC), potentially leading to a set
of globally-accepted minimum energy efficiency standards on a limited but critical range of energy intensive
industrial and consumer goods.

a Joint Project of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) with the business-NGO Climate
Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB) to develop a principles-based international financial reporting
standard for corporate climate disclosure suitable for ultimate adoption by regulators, as well as a similar
public-private collaboration to create a global standard for the labelling of emission footprints on
consumer products, building on work also already under way in the non-governmental organization community.

The Council on Sustainable Energy has proposed the negotiation of a sectoral free trade arrangement for
sustainable energy products and services that would eliminate tariffs and harmonize standards on such trade
as well as begin to discipline domestic fossil fuel subsidies.

The Industry Partner Water Initiative and the Council on Water Security have proposed a new international
multistakeholder platform to help water-stressed countries and regions transform the management of their
water resources, supported by an unparalleled network of public, civil society and private expertise.


Security Cooperation

The Council on Terrorism & Weapons of Mass Destruction has proposed the creation of a Global Alliance
Against Nuclear Terrorism composed of states that commit to secure all nuclear weapons and materials to a
“gold standard” – beyond the reach of terrorists or thieves – by embedding principles of “assured nuclear security”
and “nuclear accountability”.

Based in part on discussions at the Qatar country hearing, the Council on Energy Security has proposed the
creation of a new intergovernmental energy security forum encompassing producing and consuming nations
and providing a platform for the identification of areas of potential cooperation on a wide range of energy
challenges.

The Council on Human Rights & Protection has proposed a series of steps to strengthen particularly the non-
military institutional capacity required for the effective prevention of mass atrocities under the United
Nations Responsibility to Protect framework.

The Council on Energy Security has proposed the creation of a global public-private partnership to manage
the civilian nuclear fuel cycle as a means of reducing the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation as additional
countries engage in nuclear power generation.

The Council on Catastrophic Risks has proposed a high-level, inclusive dialogue including business, political and
civil society leaders to develop better institutions and networks to support global risk management.

The Council on the Future of the Internet has proposed new, self-associating ways of mobilizing international
cooperation to strengthen the resilience of the World Wide Web.

The YGL Civic Eyes Task Force has proposed a new organization to strengthen domestic capacity to replicate
mass citizen participation in the monitoring and reporting of election irregularities through crowdsourcing
technologies.


Everybody’s Business: Strengthening International Cooperation in a More Interdependent World

Everybody’s Business: Strengthening International Cooperation in a More Interdependent World

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