Breakdown or Breakthrough? The high stakes in Our Common Agenda?
“This article originally appeared on the UN Foundation blog here”.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has just launched Our Common Agenda, his vision for renewing global cooperation for the future. UN Foundation President and CEO Elizabeth Cousens explores the highlights from this landmark report and explains what comes next.
In just one year, a simple virus — long predicted by global
health experts — killed 4.5 million people, sent global GDP plummeting by 3.5%,
and caused half the world’s children to be affected by school closures, 124
million people to be pushed into extreme poverty, women to leave the workforce
in record numbers, and 23 million children to miss routine immunizations
against life-threatening diseases.
This is just a fraction of the human and social toll of
COVID-19, which has also deepened divisions, fueled conspiracy theories, and
worsened inequities at every level that were already intolerably high.
This is also what happens when we fail to prepare or adequately
respond to a true, collective threat in our interconnected world. We face an
immediate cascade of impacts that touches every aspect of our lives. We are
given a visceral reminder that each of us holds each other’s fates in our hands
— that solidarity is, in fact, self-interest.
COVID-19 is our test, and it won’t be the last. The climate
emergency is, of course, already upon us.
Vaccination campaign launch against
COVID-19 in Democratic Republic of Congo, with vaccines received through the
COVAX initiative. Photo by Olivia Acland/UNICEF
We are at a turning point — an “open moment” in history, as some
have said — and the choices we make now will determine our shared future.
Will we summon the resolve to end the COVID-19 pandemic fully and
equitably? If we fail, we stand to lose $9.2 trillion in 2021 alone. If we
succeed, we save lives and livelihoods and gain new confidence that we can
conquer collective challenges together.
Will we act on what science unequivocally tells us to limit climate
change and keep our planet a safe home for humanity? If we fail, we guarantee a
future of increasing weather extremes, competition over resources, and cascades
of intersecting crises. Air pollution already kills 7 million people a year
today, let alone if we fail to correct it. But if we succeed, we reap the gains
of technology and a decarbonized economy for better health and better lives. A
green economy could yield gains of $26 trillion and 65 million new jobs by 2030
alone.
And will we, finally, recognize the indivisibility of our common
future and the imperative of working together to secure it?
A COMMON AGENDA FOR
“WE THE PEOPLES”
The UN Secretary-General has just presented Our Common Agenda, his vision for
renewing global cooperation to meet the needs of the 21st century and the
expectations of people everywhere for a healthier, fairer, and more sustainable
world. In his words, the choice is clear: Our future can be secured only if we
admit that “we are bound to each other and that no community or country,
however powerful, can solve its challenges alone.”
Our Common Agenda presents a vision and plan for how the United Nations can
bring together world leaders, international organizations, global businesses,
civil society champions, and young people to solve global problems.
The plan starts with tackling growing polarization and
inequality within our societies, and for good reason. Countries find it hard to
cooperate globally when social cohesion is fraying at home, and surely the
greatest test of international cooperation is whether it can enable real change
in real people’s lives and communities.
Our Common Agenda presents a compelling case for a renewed social
contract between people and their governments based on a comprehensive
vision of human rights, inclusion, and participation, as an indispensable basis
for rebuilding people’s trust in the institutions that serve them.
The Secretary-General calls for restoring trust in
science and ending the “infodemic” that is tearing at our social
fabric by the day.
He proposes that we measure what matters and
challenge our systems to move beyond GDP to capture the full measure of our economic
impact on human, social, and natural systems — something the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) also urged.
With half the world today under 30 and more than 10 billion
people to be born this century, the Secretary-General also calls for new
ambition in delivering for young people and future generations. He wants to
create space for young people within the international system as designers of the
future, while delivering on their core priorities, such as education
and skills, jobs and economic opportunities, and tackling climate change and
existential threats to their future. He calls for a Special Envoy for Future
Generations and a Declaration on Future Generations to be agreed at a Summit of
the Future. To increase foresight, a new Futures Lab will connect and coalesce
collective capacity to think, plan, and act for the future.
At the heart of the new agenda sits a set of proposals
that will support the global commons and global public goods on which
we all depend, while preventing and mitigating the risks that can turn our
lives upside down in the blink of an eye.
Our Common Agenda calls for new attention to global trends and risks, a more
resilient global economy that works for all, a new agenda for peace as risks to
collective security grow, and a plan to reclaim the digital commons as a space
for the future of humanity. He includes a call for a “last mile alliance” to
accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals for the most vulnerable and
proposes an Emergency Platform for the next time the world faces a crisis on
the scale of COVID-19. Both are ideas the UN Foundation has long championed.
The thread that runs through all the Secretary-General’s
proposals is the need for a revitalized multilateralism that is more
networked, inclusive, and accountable to “We the Peoples.” The
interconnected challenges we face today can be surmounted only by working
together across borders and sectors. Twenty-first century multilateralism needs
us to be “all in” and needs all of us to be in.
OUR COMMON AGENDA AND
UN FOUNDATION
That vision has long inspired us at the UN Foundation, and we
have often called for a more innovative multilateralism for the
future that is focused on the most pressing challenges, open to new models of
collaboration, and including from the beginning everyone with a stake in how
international institutions and systems perform.
We were proud to support Our Common Agenda over
the past year, working with the Igarapé Institute and other partners to mobilize
expertise, ideas, and research, and collaborating with dozens of countries from
every region that, rightly, have high expectations for what the UN needs to
deliver in an era of crisis and change.
We also hosted a group of Next Generation Fellows,
who were asked by the Secretary-General to bring together young leaders,
activists, and thinkers to contribute to his report and publish a companion
volume, Our Future
Agenda. Their convener, Aishwarya Machani, also writes about the essential role played by young people in
developing Our Common Agenda.
In the coming weeks, we will be speaking and writing about the
opportunities for taking forward Our Common Agenda and acting
on its bracing call to action.
We look forward to redoubling work with partners who see the
United Nations as a platform to solve humanity’s greatest challenges and who
share our belief that Our Common Agenda can inspire the
reinvigorated multilateralism we need to secure our common future.
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