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How The UN And Its Member States Can Reassert Global Leadership

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The United Nations hosts President Biden and dozens of word leaders this week, when they will deliver remarks to the General Assembly on issues of the day — the climate crisis, food insecurity, the lingering effects of the Covid pandemic, and, of course, the war in Ukraine. But much of the meaningful activity will take place outside of the UN complex. As the institution’s ability to address pressing global problems has increasingly come into question over the last four decades, a wide range of private actors now regularly gather in New York during the General Assembly aiming to help fill a leadership void.

In fact, UN week now bears a growing resemblance to the World Economic Forum’s week-long gathering of business and government leaders, academics, and activists in Davos in January. Organizers of that annual conference in the Swiss mountains assert that they are striving to “demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest while upholding the highest standards of governance.” But critics like Anand Girdharadas, the author of Winners Take All, offer a decidedly more cynical view. He describes Davos as a place where business and government leaders promote “virtuous side projects instead of doing their day jobs more honorably.”

Setting aside that debate, I think it’s safe to say that the scene around the UN General Assembly is very much like Davos, where I’ve observed during several visits the merging of the roles of government and business. This is in part a response to the weakening of the UN system and a diminished expectation that governments will solve the world’s most pressing problems.

UN week this year coincides with climate week, during which speakers at dozens of private events will explore responses to climate change. They include the Clinton Global Initiative, back after a five- year hiatus, which bills itself as a “a community of doers who are taking action on the world’s most pressing challenges, together.” The Concordia Summit, now in its 12th year, boasts the "top movers and shakers of today’s world to spark dialogue, promote collaboration, and collectively pave the path towards a more equitable, sustainable future.” The list goes on.

Though many of these efforts are well-intentioned and undertaken with great energy, they are not a substitute for strong governmental actions. And increasingly in places like the United States, corporate maneuvering, especially through business-lobbying organizations, is actually diminishing government capacity and effectiveness.

The annual opening of the UN General Assembly session was, for the most part, a gathering of world leaders and diplomats. New Yorkers complained about gridlocked streets, especially on Manhattan’s East Side, but in general, onlookers assumed that governments were meeting to grapple with the most important political and economic challenges facing the world.

Founded 77 years ago as the world struggled to recover from the ravages of World War II, the United Nations was a bold and hopeful experiment. Initially, it was comprised of about 70 countries determined to avoid future world wars and genocides, provide humanitarian relief to refugees and other vulnerable groups, and willing to pool their resources to address grinding global poverty. Now, with 193 member states, the UN embraces the same mandate but faces challenges to its leadership in an increasingly polarized and complicated world.

Probably the stiffest challenge to the UN’s effectiveness is the lack of leadership by essential member states. If the governments of UN member states cannot agree on how to move forward, then the enterprise fails. And on many critical issues, from the climate crisis to the war in Ukraine, the major powers in the world, including the United States, the EU nations, China, and Russia, simply cannot reach a consensus.

On too many of these issues, the UN simply does not have the political support or resources to make a meaningful difference. Consider the issue of climate. Though governments, through the UN and a series of climate change summits, made ambitious commitments in Paris in 2015 to reduce carbon emissions, there has been far too little international enforcement of the main target, which is to limit the increase in average global temperatures from pre-industrial levels to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050.

The problem begins with countries like China and India, where carbon emissions are high and growing, It also implicates the U.S., where emissions are declining and many Democrats are pushing for more progress but Republican leaders continue to oppose sufficient funding for efforts to move the country from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Governments also are failing to advance effective collective actions on climate through the UN. The fact that the next two global climate summits will be held in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, countries that severely restrict civil society organizations from operating, is a symptom of the lack of strong international leadership on this issue.


While a growing number of companies have heralded their commitments to reducing their carbon footprint, they typically focus on their own facilities, rather than on the role their products and services play in boosting emissions. It is now abundantly clear that absent government engagement — for example, through enhanced reporting requirements and laws that limit carbon emissions — most companies will not take sufficient measures, and the existential threat to our planet will escalate.


One notable and very positive exception, where the UN and collective government action have been effective, is in reducing global poverty. Forty years ago, more than 40% of the world’s population was living in extreme poverty, subsisting on less than $1.25 a day. While COVID-19 has interrupted this steady progress in the last two years, that number has been reduced to less than 10% today, meaning that more than two billion people have been lifted out of poverty. This is a remarkable achievement that resulted from development assistance from wealthy governments, the leadership of international development banks and agencies, and a globalized economy that has created hundreds of millions of new jobs, mostly in the private sector. The UN played an important role in coordinating these various efforts.


This is a model that needs to be extended to other issues as well, led by governments willing to assume the mantle of leadership on the world stage. Only when they are ready to do so will the United Nations begin to reach its potential and realize the dreams of its founders.

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