On Friday, September 8 at Stimson, in an event co-sponsored with the Center for Global Development, Arunabha Ghosh (Founding CEO of the New Delhi-based Council on Energy, Environment, and Water) and Richard Ponzio (Director of Stimson’s Just Security 2020 Program) launched their new book Human Development and Global Institutions: Evolution, Impact, Reform during an experts discussion featuring Khadija Haq (Honorary President, Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre, Lahore), Robert Berg (Distinguished Fellow and Director of Stimson’s Working with the New Majority Program), and Jonathan Hall (Head of Unit, Human Development Report Office, UNDP). The event was moderated by Cindy Huang (Senior Policy Fellow, Center for Global Development).
The book details how human development faces new risks and threats, caused by political, economic, social, and environmental forces, which are highlighted in a series of engaging case studies on trade, water, energy, the environment, democracy, human rights, and peacebuilding. The book makes the case for why human development remains relevant in an increasingly globalized world, while asking whether global institutions, such as the United Nations, World Bank, and World Trade Organization, will be able to sustain political and moral support from their member states and powerful non-state actors. It argues that fresh new perspectives on human development are now urgently needed to fill critical gaps across borders and entire regions. A positive, forward-looking agenda for the future of global governance would have to engage with new issues such as the Sustainable Development Goals, energy transitions, resource scarcity, migration, violent extremism, and the expansion of democratic governance within and between nations. For a synthesis of Robert Berg’s remarks on the need for a “Third Wave of Intellectual Leadership on Development at the UN” presented at the September 8 event, please click here.
September also welcomed world leaders back to New York and United Nations Headquarters for the annual gathering known by many as simply “UNGA Week”. For a commentary by American University Professor Michael Schroeder and Richard Ponzio on the September 18 UN Reform High-Level Event presided over by U.S. President Donald Trump, visit here. For a further brief examination on whether UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ UN Secretariat peace and security reforms, announced just prior to UNGA Week, are an important step forward, please click here. Finally, for an Al Jazeera World interview with Richard Ponzio that sums up UNGA Week, including major highlights such as the North Korean nuclear crisis, please visit here.
