“Conflicts, Challenges, Cooperation and Solutions - The UN in the 21st Century” - Centre for Hellenic Studies (Greece), Harvard University

Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a pleasure to be in Athens today - thank you for your kind invitation.

Being in Greece reminds me of what we owe to this land: the very foundation of our political ideals. Our sense of society. Even the way we tell a story - or as the French author Raymond Queneau once put it: “Every great work of literature is either the Iliad or the Odyssey.”

It was in Athens that Aristotle recognised the Zoon Politikon, the human being as a social and political being. It is only within the community of the Polis - he taught us - that human life can flourish. It may “come into being for the sake of living”, he said, “but it remains in existence for the sake of living well.”

But across the millennia that followed, the nature of how this Polis should be constructed - who should hold power and how - was perennially contested.

In fact, the implicit self-evidence with which we in recent times treated democracy as the natural order within a state - and the liberal rule-based system between states - seems almost naïve.
The last couple of years have shaken off this complacency. We are forced to acknowledge that fundamental questions about the way our world is governed have been thrown wide open once again.

This crisis did not emerge out of a vacuum, and yet, it feels recent. It felt unthinkable in the 1990s, at the apex of euphoria just after the Iron Curtain came down. And even in 2011, as the first buds of the Arab Spring blossomed, history seemed to have but one direction.

And today? People ask whether democracy is viable. Powerful actors on the world stage propagate the motto “yes to growth and security, no to freedom and democracy.” A new fascination for authoritarianism has penetrated our discourse.

As I said, none of this emerged out of a vacuum. To explore where it came from - and crucially, what we can do about it - I would propose three terms and interrogate them in turn.

They are: Polarisation; Diffusion; and Disruption.

Start with Polarisation.

This one is perhaps the easiest to recognize. Listen to a political debate today, and chances are you will hear it instantly. It’s reminiscent of what Hannah Arendt wrote of the 1920s and 30s: any statement of fact becomes a question of motive. Debates are decided by allegiance, not arguments.

The very modus operandi of populists the world over depends on polarization, on “us versus them” - the people against the establishment, the locals versus the immigrants, and similar false dichotomies.

But we also witness structural polarisation.

Think about how big cities are booming, but opportunities are disappearing in many rural areas. Young people in particular are leaving for the city despite of rising rents and strained infrastructure, searching for stable employment they too often cannot find, and facing growing despair.

Think about how bonuses and salaries in the global financial industry reach dizzying heights and benefit only a few, while the vast majority see incomes stagnate.

Think about how the CEO of a company now makes more money in a single day than a typical worker does in an entire year or in some cases in an entire lifetime.

82% of the wealth generated last year went to the world’s richest 1%, according to a new Oxfam report. The world created new billionaires at a rate of one every two days, nine tenth of them men. This huge increase among the 1% could have ended global extreme poverty seven times over. But instead the nearly four billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth. Entire regions and countries are failing to catch up to the waves of progress, left behind in the Rust Belts of our world.

There is an economic polarization, where some people - global elites, wealthy corporations - are seemingly living by a different set of rules, avoiding taxes and manipulating loopholes, while ordinary citizens feel that ‘banks may be too big to fail, but I am too small to matter’.

Deepening polarisation in our political debate and rampant inequality in our economic affairs is creating a dangerous seedbed for discontent. It stretches the fabric of society to the breaking point. It undermines trust in the institutions that govern our society.

Speaking about the institutions that govern our society brings me to the second development that drives this sense of instability, and that is diffusion. We are witnessing a dramatic diffusion of power.
What used to be a bipolar world, with controlled confrontation between two superpowers, has metamorphosed into something much more diffuse – internationally, mid-level powers act increasingly autonomously from the big powers; domestically, the state’s monopoly of power is challenged by non-state actors; cyberspace is mostly privately owned and operated by huge corporations; and even within governments, mayors can at times be as influential in making policy as prime ministers or presidents. And thanks to technology, people have immediate access to information, equipping them with the tools to join the public debate and hold their governments accountable.

So the impact of this can be good - such as when it empowers citizens to make their voice heard in the decision-making progress. The impact can be bad - such as when states lose effective control over their territory and protracted conflicts become more complicated than three-dimensional chess. In either case, the new polycentric system is more fluid and unstable than the balance of power that preceded it.

Many actors other than governments today have the means to act on a global scale. Some of this is rooted in the liberalization that began in the 1970s - which essentially marked a retreat of public actors (like governments) relative to private entities (like corporations). But equally critical is the technological transformation that has shrunk the world by compressing time and space.

Speaking about technological transformation brings me to the third term I introduced before, and that is disruption.

Technology has disrupted every dimension of our life on a scale that is nothing short of breath-taking. Again, it has done so for both good and bad.

The technology that delivers the entirety of human knowledge to a child in a remote village on a single hand-held device is undoubtedly good.

But the same technology also equipped some governments and corporations with the means for surveillance of almost anyone, anywhere, at any time.

And all indications are that we are on the verge of much greater disruptions.

Artificial intelligence - to quote the CEO of Google - will be as profound for humanity’s progress as electricity or fire.

But what happens when machines are smart enough to become workers - in other words, when capital becomes labour? The McKinsey Global Institute has calculated that 375 million people, that’s 14% of the global workforce, could have their jobs automated away by 2030.

Indeed, it is statistics like this one that lead many to look wearily into the future.

There is no shortage of gloomy predictions, and no shortage of existential threats to justify them.

First among which is climate change. To make it tangible, think about what will happen to the planet in just the one hour we are spending together tonight.

According to data from the World Bank and the World Wildlife Fund, in this single hour, four million tons of carbon dioxide will be emitted; 1,500 hectares of forests will be cut; and three species will go extinct. During this hour, the pollution that already resides in our atmosphere will trap as much heat as would be released by detonating over 16,600 Hiroshima class atomic bombs. All in just one hour.

The impact of all of this is clear and undeniable, as the latest report from the World Meteorological Organization just confirmed: 17 of the hottest years ever measured have been since 2001; the hottest of all were the last three years. Climate change threatens everyone, everywhere. It requires urgent, collective action.

And instead - our society is polarized; authority is diffuse; and we are transfixed as established ways of working and living are disrupted.

All of this combines to produce an overarching sense of disquiet, gloom and pessimism. This is borne out by the data. A recent study showed that just 36% of all 20 to 35 year olds in the developed world - the industrialized countries of Europe and North America - believe that the future will look brighter for them.

But here comes the twist. The same survey asked the young generation in the developing world - across Africa, India and Asia - whether they looked optimistically into the future. Guess what: over 70% said that they do!

Taking the view of the ‘Global South’ is instructive. It allows for what you might call the ‘optimist’ view against the ‘pessimist’ view that I outlined before.

And it is easy to adopt this optimistic view by way of a short hypothetical: If you had to choose one moment in history in which to be born, and you did not know in advance whether you were going to be male or female, which country you were going to be from, or what your status was, which time would you choose?

You would choose today. Because you would, in most places, be less likely to be living in poverty; less likely to be illiterate; less likely to confront intolerance and oppression; and less likely to die of diseases or be killed in a war than at any time in human history.

That may be hard to imagine, given what we see in the news, but it’s true. And a lot of that has to do with the achievements of the global rules-based order created after the Second World War.

For much of this incredible story of progress happened in the past seven decades.

With few exceptions, poverty has been reduced more in the last 50 years than in the previous 500 years. Data by the IMF shows that the average Chinese person is 10 times richer today than he or she was just five decades ago – and lives for 25 years longer.

Meanwhile, you would have to go back hundreds of years to find a similar period of great power peace. According to data compiled by the Oxford economist Max Roser, the number of people who have died as a result of war, civil war, and, yes, terrorism, is down 50% this decade from the 1990s. It is down 75% from the preceding five decades, the decades of the Cold War, and it is, of course, down 99% from the decade before that, which is World War II.

That is a remarkable achievement. Recall the famous analysis by Thucydides about the Peloponnesian War. “What made war inevitable”, he wrote, “was the growth of Athenian power and the fear this caused in Sparta.” In recent decades, we have witnessed power shifts at least as dramatic as the growth of Athenian power relative to Sparta. But not only is war no longer inevitable; today, it is illegal. What would have been an absurd notion to Thucydides is today enshrined in the UN Charter - the prohibition of the use of force by one state against another.

Progress continues as we speak. I mentioned before how much harm we inflict on our planet in the span of just 60 minutes. But within that hour, it is also true that the number of people who live on less than $2 a day actually goes down by 9,000 every hour; that every hour, 12,500 people gain access to clean drinking water around the world.

So what are we to make of all this? You can paint a plausible picture of the world on the brink of collapse, but you can equally sketch out why we might just be living in the best of times.
I would draw three insights.

First, that the challenges we face are real, existential, and among the most dangerous we ever faced. But nothing – not climate change, not technological disruption, not inequality – is independent of human action. We are the masters of our fate. Our actions matter a great deal.

And this means that secondly, we have the ability to resolve them. The point of the incredible stories of progress in our recent past is that we have reasons to be optimistic. Not blind optimism, but hard-earned optimism, rooted in very real progress.

Thirdly, any action must be global and universal. We simply cannot successfully deal with the multiplicity of challenges we face either regionally, sequentially or in isolation.

To do that, we need to reaffirm the global order and the institutions that underpin it, notably the United Nations - which remains the only neutral table where everyone can come together.

The problem of course is that geopolitically, the past couple of years are generally seen as a breakdown of global collaboration. Tensions rose, conflicts deepened, protectionism resurfaced.
Some pundits have even declared the return of the Cold War. A return with a vengeance - but with a difference. For the mechanisms and the safeguards to manage the risks of escalation that existed in the past today seem fragile and porous, and sometimes non-existent.

All true. But only part of the story. Amidst the background noise of bellicose rhetoric, the 193 Member States of the United Nations actually agreed on something truly groundbreaking.

Some two and a half years ago, they agreed on a number of new policy frameworks, including on the most ambitious development agenda in human history – the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The 2030 Agenda is the logical, necessary, operational conclusion from the three insights I just outlined – human agency, optimism, and universality.

The 2030 Agenda constitutes universal recognition that the challenges faced by any one of us may swiftly become crises faced by all – carbon emissions know no boundaries, distant conflicts lead to refugee flows and weak healthcare systems in a remote island state can lead to worldwide pandemics.

The 2030 Agenda grasps that these challenges cannot effectively be met by tinkering around the edges of economic, social and political governance, but require a fundamental shift in the dominant development model in all countries.

With 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs for short) and 169 specific targets, we have a detailed global roadmap of what needs to be done.

The Goals address everything from ending poverty (Goal 1) and achieving gender equality (Goal 5) to decent work and equitable economic growth (Goal 8) to the rule of law (Goal 16).

They are anchored on three fundamental principles:

One, they are indivisible and universal.
Two, they “leave no one behind”.
Three, they are everyone’s responsibility.

Achieving the goals would create a world that is comprehensively sustainable: socially fair; environmentally secure; economically prosperous; inclusive; and more predictable.

The Agenda 2030 is an ambitious plan, no question. But it is the only appropriate response to the scale of the challenges we face. It is our global roadmap.

For it is - and this brings me back to the three terms I introduced at the beginning - the right response to tackle polarization, to manage disruption and to leverage diffusion.

Take polarization: the 2030 Agenda defines a set of goals that everyone can agree on and support: that sustenance is better than hunger. That literacy is better than illiteracy. That peace is better than war. That equal rights are better than bigotry and discrimination.

Or consider my earlier point about diffusion: It is true that international relations in the 21st century may be more messy than in previous decades. But it also engenders opportunities: If “you win-I lose” calculations dominated Cold War-era international relations, the SDGs are the paradigm shift necessary for the new polycentric system that does away with zero-sum games. The new logic is simple and powerful: if the threats are existential, if power is dispersed and challenges are global and interlinked, then we really are all in this together, and no one wins unless everyone wins.

The Agenda 2030 is driving a change of mindset, a new spirit of collaboration and partnership that simply wasn’t there before.

The United Nations is ready to be the convener, conveyor and facilitator for these partnerships. But its success will depend on much more than the actions of the United Nations or even of governments. It will depend on everyone’s involvement - from businesses and civil society, to everyone in this room.

It has never been easier to get involved in our collective efforts to make the world a better place. It’s also never been more necessary. This really is no time for bystanders.

The future will depend on the commitment, the ingenuity, the curiosity, the abilities, the sense of common destiny and the empowerment of every person on the planet. It will depend on you. It will depend, very crucially, on your determination and capacity for transformation and reform.

For the years and decades to come will test our civilization like no other. You are the first generation that can end extreme poverty and the last generation that can curb climate change. Think about it. It is a heavy responsibility.

We face a stark choice: If we cling to an economic and social model that drives exclusion and environmental destruction, people die, opportunities are missed, the seeds of division and future conflicts are sown and the full force of climate change becomes ever more likely.

Or we create another world - where open trade is more collaborative; where financial systems are safer and more supportive of broad-based growth; where gains are distributed fairly; where the digital revolution benefits not just the fortunate few, but lifts the fate of the many; where companies care about all their stakeholders, not just their shareholders; and where they uphold their responsibility to society, not to the stock exchange.

We have the means and the skills to create such a world. But we can only hope for success if every single one of us contributes. That is what will make or break our whole endeavor.

Thank you. Efcharistó.