Originally published on the CGS blog on June 15, 2015.
Over the next 70 years, our children and grandchildren will need to negotiate three major transitions in human civilization. Parts 1 and 2 of this series discussed transitioning to large-scale sustainable energy flows and managing the impact of human civilization on the environment.
This blog addresses the issue of maintaining global governance systems that enable humans to meet these challenges.
It has now been 95 years since the League of Nations was founded after World War I. Its current embodiment, the United Nations, is functioning but has widely recognized limitations. The UN operates in conjunction with the World Bank and the International Monetary fund (often called theBretton Woods institutions). And, of course, there are hosts of bilateral and multilateral treaties which facilitate trade and development.
What needs doing in the next 70 years? Let us address organizational issues and challenges to be managed.
Broadly speaking, the UN needs a better, democratically founded revenue base and development of each of its major functions—in traditional terms, the General Assembly as a legislative body, the Secretariat as an executive body, and judicial bodies like (but not limited to) the International Criminal Court. The challenge can be illustrated by just looking at the UNorganizational chart.
The major practical issue for CGS members is getting the United States into a less imperious mode. The UN can do more only if the US, as a dominant international player, is more willing to cooperate and help lead other nations to agree to international fees or taxation; allow UN bodies greater peacekeeping scope; submit to international judicial bodies like the ICC; agree to treaties that limit our armed forces and arms sales; allow rising nations more say in central functions like theSecurity Council; and the like.
This is not to say we are the most parochial of nations. Every country has axes to grind. We just have a very big axe.
We need to elect Congresspersons and Presidents who have a long view and are willing to shoulder the arduous tasks of negotiating practical arrangements that surrender a bit of autonomy for a more workable world regime—for the global common good.
Substantive challenges include:
- managing the great global commons by curbing climate change and addressing threats to ocean health,
- disease control,
- nuclear nonproliferation,
- accommodating the rise of great powers like China and India without the catastrophic conflicts of the last century, and
- facilitating the necessary sustainable energy transition and environmental protections discussed in the prior two blogs.
In a blog for the International Affairs Forum, I set out someadditional perspectives on necessities for long term success. These include:
- controlling parasitism by elites at both national and international levels,
- maintaining sound and far reaching knowledge systems—facilitated by free international science, other forms of inquiry, speech and debate, and
- maintaining an essential level of continuity in institutions without succumbing to suffocating stagnation.
CGS, allied with other significant civil society organizations like theWorld Federalist Movement, is a window on all this. CGS and others currently are engaged in promoting a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly to increase democratic representation at the UN.
You have an assortment of worthy causes bidding for your attention at all times. Organizations such as these are the essential channels for global citizens to use to shape the future. The foundation of all these possibilities and of solutions to very real problems lies in the global awareness and willingness of citizens like you to help shape the future.
