Global Governance: Getting Us Where We All Want to Go and Getting Us There Together

Abstract

The world of today is virtually unrecognizable from the world in which we lived at the turn of the millennium. The last ten years have given rise to new actors playing prominent roles on the global stage, new technological breakthroughs that have changed the way we interact and new challenges so serious in nature that they require all our collective energies and talents to confront them. The sea change that has washed over our planet during the past decade means that we need to view the world in a different way. Long-standing methods of addressing global problems need to be scrutinized, updated or re-tooled if we are to tackle adequately the problems of today and tomorrow. This is not to suggest that existing institutions of global governance need to be scrapped or that new ones need to be created. It may be that the institutions of today can better respond to our needs if we can conceive of a superior method of interaction among institutions and governments. What do I mean by global governance? For me global governance describes the system we set up to assist human society to achieve its common purpose in a sustainable manner, that is, with equity and justice. Growing interdependence requires that our laws, our social norms and values and our mechanisms for framing human behaviour be examined, debated, understood and operated together as coherently as possible. This is what would provide the basis for effective sustainable development in its economic, social and environmental dimensions. Whether public or private, governance needs to provide leadership, the incarnation of vision, of political energy, of drive. It also needs to provide legitimacy, which is essential to ensure ownership over decisions that lead to change; ownership to prevent the inbuilt bias towards resistance to modify the status quo. A legitimate governance system must also ensure efficiency. It must bring about results for the benefit of the people. Finally, a governance system must be coherent. Compromises need to be found over objectives that often may contradict one another. It cannot be about the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. Or, even worse, it cannot be about knowingly moving them in different directions. As we consider the most viable means of global governance in the 21st century we must start with the fact that there are many more players on the scene today than there were at the turn of the century. No longer do we live in a bipolar world as we did in the cold war, when the two superpowers exerted powerful influence on much of the world. In trade terms, the days when the European Union, the United States, Japan and Canada could decide the way forward for the rest – as they did in the 1994 Uruguay Round trade accord – are over. Even the often stated and usually polemic rhetoric of a north–south divide describes a paradigm that no longer holds true today. There are many different ‘norths’ and also many different ‘souths’. In its place we have a sort of galaxy of players, with emerging countries asserting their new roles as traditional powers seek means of influencing outcomes in the global policy debate. Today countries like China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and Mexico are major players in the global economy and increasingly as well in the arenas of health care, climate change and diplomacy. But even as these relatively new actors seek to establish their place in the world, the mutual interdependence of all countries is more evident today than ever before. From production processes to finance to trade policy, the world’s economy is integrated as never before. Global challenges like climate change, pandemics, terrorism and bringing greater equity and relevance to the multilateral trading system require global responses. Since the end of the Second World War, we have had in place an international system with the United Nations at its epicentre, supported by specialised agencies like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organization. The World Trade Organization, like its predecessor, the GATT, while not a UN agency, has largely the same members and is dedicated to the same principles of openness, transparency, stability and sustainable development. We have also had the G8 grouping of countries. By and large, this system has worked. But with the world so very different today, many are asking whether these institutions and systems are adequate for the challenges we face in the 21st century. Are they reflective of the geopolitical reality of 2010? Do developing countries Global Policy Volume 1 . Issue 3 . October 2010