Humanity’s Greatest Challenge: Thinking Global
3 MINUTE READ
The great challenges of our time are global in nature. International diplomacy is key to solving them, writes Henri Colens.
We all have problems in our day-to-day lives. Often we fixate on small things: a looming appointment, finding the best route through traffic, forgetting one’s phone charger. They take up energy and might even raise your blood pressure, but it’s good to put them in perspective: they aren’t really that important.
So what is important? When asked, most people mention a steady job, and good health. We all want to be happy and feel like we’re achieving our goals, and we want to know we’re safe and that our loved ones are too. Never has life been better: we live longer and more fulfilled lives than ever before. Never have we expected more from life as well – perhaps that’s why some of us aren’t feeling as happy as we think we should be
No, the big, important problems we face are now the ones we face collectively. These tend to be far removed from people’s daily lives - we are often insulated from them. Geo-political in nature, they are causing (or have the potential to cause) large-scale human suffering: disease, drought, war and famine. For us and for our children.
At a time when national and international politics seems to be fragmenting, the world must find ways to face up to these common problems. It’s not only a moral duty, but an economic imperative. I agree with Angela Merkel, who recently said: “Anyone who believes that the problems of this world can be solved with isolationism and protectionism is making a terrible error”
Take climate change: most of the reliable scientific evidence suggests two things: that it is speeding up and that man is contributing to it. The single most important factor causing rising temperatures is the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, in the form of CO² and methane.
Did those last two sentences make you sigh and roll your eyes? Did you by any chance feel like clicking away from this and reading about Donald Trump’s latest gaffe? Stick with me – there’s more on him later…
Did you know, since the Rio climate accord 25 years ago, the UK has reduced its carbon emissions faster than any other G7 country? In that time it has also grown its economy faster than its G7 partners. Facts like that don’t set your pulse racing. And yet they’re significant: they show that tackling climate change might not be an economic loser. A common misconception is that renewables aren't competitive or compatible with conventional fossil resources, but this is being turned on its head. Some countries are waking up fast to this. But no country can solve global warming on its own.
Two years ago in Paris, COP21 achieved a seemingly impossible feat of uniting world leaders into action. Most recognised the sound common sense of setting a global cap on temperature rise and their commitment was underscored by financial support for developing nations. But did it go far enough?
Climate is a complex issue: the majority acknowledges it, but no consensus on how to tackle it has yet to form in the public imagination: we may agree on the diagnosis, but not on the cure. Now, some will argue that COP21 administered the first spoonful of much-needed medicine. But to many experts and activists COP21 was like administering cough medicine to a cancer patient.
Some say the quickest and best solution would be to implement a global carbon pricing scheme. But COP has so far failed to deliver a definitive vision of a world emissions trading scheme. This has to change.
As well as the environmental, there is also an economic cost associated with not acting. We are beginning to measure and predict this far more accurately. Businesses have been the first to heed the warning. Environmental policies and sustainability are concepts now firmly embedded within all of the top global companies. And yet more must be done.
The withdrawal from the EU and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) offers a chance for the UK government to show real leadership in developing a thriving bioeconomy and disruptive green technology. The UK would be well-placed to advocate for global measures and leverage it's still considerable network in Commonwealth countries in Asia and Africa.
However, I would argue that international diplomacy is the key to achieving a sustainable solution to climate change. An example of this came when French President Emmanuel Macron was visited by US counterpart Donald Trump over the recent Bastille holiday. Macron pushed Trump to rethink his position on the Paris Climate deal, and made it using the economic case.
Because international and global organisations and institutions such as the UNFCC wield only soft power it’s vital that world leaders take up the slack. Mr Trump may be talking up “America First” at home, but he will soon learn that he won’t be able to ignore his foreign counterparts forever.
It’s not just climate change. The same can be said for the challenges of terrorism, migration and financial transparency. As Bono says: "No matter how much we disagree, a lot can be achieved if the one thing we agree on is important enough." Love him or loathe him, the singer and campaigner has used this mantra to get all parts of the political spectrum, left and right, to work for common causes.
In our new post-Brexit, post-truth, postmodern age, cooperation is the name of the game.