Executive Summary
“The steps that are needed from the developed nations are clear. The first is ensuring trade justice. I have said before that trade justice is a truly meaningful way for the developed countries to show commitment to bringing about an end to global poverty. The second is an end to the debt crisis for the poorest countries. The third is to deliver much more aid and make sure it is of the highest quality.”
– Nelson Mandela, Anti-Apartheid Activist, Politician, and Statesman
Human security—the protection of the vital core of all human lives, including fundamental freedoms, from critical and pervasive threats through a mutually supportive system of just, environmentally sustainable, and technologically adept governance—is under siege from multiple directions. Hundreds of millions face acute poverty worldwide, as global growth remains below historical averages and broader progress languishes too on most of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In 2024, resurgent conflicts have fueled forced displacement to a new record level (110 million), while six of nine life-giving planetary boundaries (namely, climate change, biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater change, novel entities, and biogeochemical flows) continue to transgress. Equally alarming are present democratic governance and human rights trends, with the continued decline, over nearly two-decades now, in global freedom.
Against this difficult backdrop, the findings and policy and institutional reform proposals presented in Global Governance Innovation Report 2024 (GGIR’24) are intended to encourage more ambition in the negotiations shaping the September 22-23, 2024 Summit of the Future at the start of the General Assembly’s High-Level Week in New York. This second edition of the GGIR focuses on Advancing Human Security through a New Global Economic Governance Architecture. It aims to further refine and operationalize the concepts and recommendations introduced in the Bridgetown Initiative for the Reform of the Global Financial Architecture, the UN Secretary-General’s Our Common Agenda report and Reforms to the International Financial Architecture policy brief, and the High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism report.
The world needs better ways to manage its many, growing problems. In the global economic governance space, where new ideas are urgently needed for more broad-based, green development, this means engaging new voices, instruments, networks, knowledge, and structures. Accelerating progress on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and safeguarding human security will also require an in-depth focus on UN system-G20 economic coordination, financing for development, global monetary and fiscal policy, and such “new frontiers” in global trade governance as artificial intelligence, sustainability, and futures thinking.
The Summit of the Future represents a generational opportunity to refashion our approaches to tackling complex global problems that no single country or institution is capable of addressing alone. Among the report’s chief recommendations for leveraging this moment for the benefit of present and future generations through the summit’s Pact for the Future (outcome document) are:
Rethinking Global Economic Coordination and Development Promotion
Biennial UN-G20+ Summit on the Global Economy (Biennial Summit): For better fostering socioeconomic recovery from the pandemic, mitigating and managing cross-border shocks, and addressing rising global inequality, world leaders should agree to convene, at the start of the General Assembly’s High-Level Week, a Biennial Summit with leaders from the world body’s 193 Member States, the G20 Presidency, and heads of the UN, World Bank, IMF, WTO, and ILO. Moreover, we advocate establishing a small, “networked secretariat” led by the UN Deputy Secretary-General and engaging senior technical staff from these same bodies, both to ensure accountability of decisions reached and to serve as a knowledge center to collect, validate, and push out collective analysis and new policy ideas.
Innovate the SDRs for Debt Relief and Global Public Goods Financing: Beyond the immediate use of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to improve global liquidity management in times of crisis, the IMF should mobilize additional resources for debt relief and global public goods financing by: i) tapping capital markets and issuing bonds denominated in SDRs; ii) making better targeted emergency SDR allocations under more streamlined and simplified procedures; and iii) and allocating SDRs regularly to supplement the demand for “own reserves.” Wealthy countries should also be encouraged to reallocate their SDRs to vulnerable, low-income states through the IMF’s new Resilience and Sustainability Trust.
Increase Multilateral Development Banks’ Lending Capabilities: To partially address massive SDGs financing gaps, the Executive Boards of the World Bank and other Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) should show greater commitment to pursuing a general capital increase. Designed to leverage financing from the private sector and other development actors too, the report supports calls for massively increasing Multilateral Development Banks’ lending capacity by at least US$500 billion a year (supported by an increase in paid-in capital and more efficient use of their balance sheets), aiming eventually for $1 trillion. New forms of global public investment, in which all countries can contribute to, benefit from, and collectively determine spending priorities, further merit high consideration.
New Frontiers in Global Trade Governance, Including AI-Cybertech & Future Generations
Make the WTO & UNCTAD Fit for Future Purpose: Flexible, inclusive, agile, and transparent World Trade Organization (WTO) and UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) priority reforms should include: i) Using the next WTO Ministerial Meeting to discuss revising the single undertaking principle in negotiations (i.e., where nothing is agreed until everything is agreed) and further limiting decisionmaking based on consensus; ii) Employing the G20 to invest in and unlock WTO reform issues, including on dispute settlement, increasing the number of high-level consensus-building opportunities; and iii) Encouraging National Committees on Trade Facilitation (NCTFs) to work in coordination with UNCTAD to promote South-South and Triangular collaboration toward better conditions for global trade governance reform, responsibility, and innovation.
Global Trade support from an International Artificial Intelligence Agency (IA2): AI creates global economic opportunities and challenges for trade, including the reform of cross-border data flows and data localization measures. Meanwhile, digital cross-border trade governance has largely taken place in bilateral and regional trade agreements. Within a collectively agreed governing mandate, the proposed IA2 should monitor artificial intelligence in trade—both in its application to trade governance, and trade of AI services itself—measuring the distribution of AI chips and AI compute infrastructure through a chip registry. Doing so can increase transparency and enhance trust, while supporting cross-border deliveries in the global economy. The IA2’s governing approach would prevent the fragmentation of the global digital economy, and integrate international standards (including through the Global Digital Compact) and agreements to facilitate data exchange between systems and regions.
An Earth Trusteeship Council for Global Commons Stewardship and the Declaration on Future Generations: In place of the all-but-defunct Trusteeship Council, and serving as an oversight body comprised of UN Member States and other relevant stakeholders (including indigenous groups and youth), an Earth Trusteeship Council (ETC) would ensure that the principles of sustainability, human rights, and intergenerational equity are integral to UN system decision-making. Specifically, the ETC would apply the Declaration on Future Generations to current and future scenarios, as well as enforce standards to deter global commons’ degradation. To guarantee adherence to the Declaration on Futures Generations’ commitments, the ETC would conduct an annual “Future Generations Review,” modeled on the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review.
In the global economic governance space, where new ideas are urgently needed for more broad-based, green development, this means engaging new voices, instruments, networks, knowledge, and structures.
ImPact Coalitions & Summit of the Future Follow-Through
Time is running short, but the scaling-up of some twenty inclusive ImPact Coalitions at the May 2024 United Nations Civil Society Conference in Nairobi offers hope for the adoption of more highly effective global governance changes by September’s summit. Representing an experiment in self-organization, these expert-oriented platforms bring together civil society, international organizations, governments, and the private sector on issues as diverse as international financial architecture reform, artificial intelligence, peacebuilding, and future generations. At their core, they support Member States wishing to champion pathbreaking global governance ideas. They also begin the implementation discussion early to ensure sufficient summit follow-through. The Summit of the Future presents both a milestone and another step in the long journey toward achieving human security for all. Reflecting the decades-long, positive transformation underway in global governance, world leaders who accept and take on—rather than express indifference and shun—today’s toughest global challenges will be joined by myriad diverse, well-resourced, and networked partners across civil society and the business community. We owe this renewed commitment to collective global action to today’s younger generation and all future generations, both to fulfill their most urgent human needs, while charting an environmentally sustainable course to realize their highest aspirations
