COOPERATION IN ENVIRONMENT, HEALTH AND SCIENCE
CONTEXT
Global cooperation on tackling the huge challenges of Covid and climate change using the latest research and technology is now high on the multilateral agenda. As we build health and environmental resilience over the longer term, it is vital that there is Pan-European, transatlantic and global cooperation despite competition, protectionist trends and tensions in other areas. As suggested in Reforming Multilateralism in Post-Covid Times by the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, there is now “systemic competition between different potential world orders,” as several factors converge: the unipolar phase after the fall of the Berlin Wall draws to a close, nationalist trends proliferate among several nations, polarisation spreads between perceived “winners and losers” from globalisation and the role of cyberspace and technology in governance and society expands.
“The Covid-19 pandemic is now acting as a catalyst on, and a magnifier of, these many trends and tensions…creating a multidimensional crisis with strong impacts on the health, social, economic, political and cultural conditions of all countries. As we recover and transform economies and societies, this is a make-or-break moment for higher international cooperation and it will probably be a turning point shaping the emergent new global order.”
The book suggests we need a renewal of international cooperation with a multilateralism for the 21st century by building a large coalition of forces, involving states, regional organisations, civil society and individuals – a global coalition of progressive forces that develops a common agenda.
In Keeping Channels Open discussions, experts focused on how to recover from the pandemic and deal with the ever-visible threat of climate change and erosion of our natural world, amid fragmentation of the world order and geopolitical change.
Covid
In our dialogues, there was consensus that we are at a moment of crisis and division in terms of the global world order.
“The pandemic has exacerbated existing fault lines including the growing divide between China and the free world and between richer and poorer countries especially in public health. It’s also speeded up the pull-back from supply chain globalisation.”
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Climate Change
The G7 and G20 summits in 2021 were seen as milestones in terms of injecting momentum into the climate agenda ahead of COP26 in Glasgow in November. As we debated progress in our Keeping Channels Open discussions, some feared the final UN Summit wouldn’t go far enough.
“There is a creeping feeling among climate-watching crowds that when it comes to COP26, we are more likely headed for a rerun of Copenhagen than the big leap forward at Paris.”
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