Having just been elected president of the US for a second time, Donald Trump is poised to reshape international relations at a critical moment. Navigating this new and dangerous era of uncertainty requires reflecting on the progress we have made, not least to seek insights into how to overcome the challenges ahead.
The past 80 years have been the most peaceful in history. Major strides have been made in improving gender equality, with the global gender gap now considered to be 68.5 percent closed, according to the World Economic Forum. Literacy has soared: 87 percent of adults worldwide can now read and write (compared with just 36 percent in 1950). Longevity has improved dramatically, with average life expectancy standing at 73 today, up from 66 at the turn of the century. Mass famines, once a common occurrence, have been limited.
Humanity has all the tools it needs to sustain — and accelerate — this progress. In fact, with the knowledge and technologies we already possess, we could solve some of the greatest challenges we face, from poverty and food insecurity to climate change and rapid population growth. This should thus be a time for optimism. Yet the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — whose founders include physicists Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer — has set its Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight, indicating that humanity is now closer to annihilation than ever before.
Illustration: Yusha
It is not difficult to see why. It is not a coincidence that during the long period of relative global peace and stability, democracy gained ground steadily, broad-based global cooperation became the norm and the world demonstrated an unprecedented shared commitment to human rights. However, today we are witnessing the erosion of democracy and international cooperation, as well as the proliferation of wars and conflicts in which innocent civilians are flagrantly targeted and aggressors act with impunity. These developments reflect systemic failures by our decisionmaking institutions over many decades.
The way we consume information in the digital age has contributed to the problem. Social media platforms, while offering unprecedented opportunities for connection, education and advocacy, have also challenged our ability to discern fact from fiction and upended the shared understanding of reality we need to facilitate collective problem solving and preserve democracy. While advanced artificial intelligence (AI) holds immense potential benefit for humanity, to harness the promise of these technologies fully, while mitigating the threats, we must focus on ethical governance, digital literacy and global cooperation.
Moreover, the arrival of a new world disorder is playing out against a terrifying backdrop: climate change. With each year proving hotter than the last, the planet is now dangerously close to several tipping points, from Antarctica to the Amazon to the Atlantic circulation.
As we discussed at last month’s Nobel Prize Dialogue in Sydney, Australia, in the face of such existential threats, we have a responsibility — to our fellow humans, to our planet and to future generations — to improve our decisionmaking radically. Since cooperation has always been humanity’s superpower, the first step must be to rebuild a global culture that sustains it, underpinned by a shared, fact-based understanding of reality and trust in institutions.
To that end, robust support for academic research, scientific institutions, professional journalism and transparent government agencies is vital. By fostering trust in these pillars of knowledge and credible information, we can overcome (mis)information overload, AI hallucinations and propaganda to create a common base of knowledge that transcends national and cultural boundaries. That effort should be supported by a renewed push to deliver education for global citizenship and to establish platforms designed for collaboration and cross-cultural understanding.
Combating misinformation and achieving a shared, fact-based understanding of reality is a prerequisite for all efforts to improve global decisionmaking and cooperation. This would entail reforming and modernizing education systems, and fostering “third millennium thinking,” characterized by curiosity, creativity, and — most important — critical thinking. It would also require inclusive global governance structures, collaborative problem solving networks and sustainable economic models that converge on shared long-term goals.
Just as strong democracies spearheaded human progress over the past century, they must play a leading role in building a global culture of cooperation. However, with deep inequalities having created fertile ground for anti-democratic forces, their ability to do so is being cast into doubt. Deliberative citizens’ assemblies and other participatory processes using random selection can help support much-needed democratic renewal by helping societies negotiate politically contentious issues.
Such transformations could make possible reform of international institutions such as the UN (in particular, the UN Security Council) and the International Criminal Court, and re-energize constructive engagement through international treaties. The world needs to make these institutions more effective and impartial to guarantee and uphold peace, development, accountability and global justice. The world urgently requires new checks on the use of nuclear weapons, including a commitment to the principles of “no first use” and “no sole authority.” Of course, the ultimate goal should be to reduce nuclear arsenals to zero to secure a safe future for humanity.
The challenges we face today are monumental, but they are not insurmountable. History has shown us that progress is possible when humanity unites around shared values, driven by a sense of common purpose. Eighty years ago, we did just that, creating global institutions capable of ushering in a new era of relative peace and stability. Rekindling that spirit of cooperation is our most urgent task.
Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni human rights activist, is the first woman from the Arab world to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Saul Perlmutter, a Nobel laureate in physics, is professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Brian Schmidt, a Nobel laureate in physics, is an astronomer at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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