Problems faced by Global governance
Global governance is in bad shape.
The world is being divided by wars amongst nations, and strife within them — wars with military weapons and with financial and trade weapons.
The trajectory of progress must be changed to make economic growth more equitable and sustainable.
Economists try to prove with numbers that poverty is reducing, and incomes are increasing for everyone.
They should look around and listen to real people struggling in precarious livelihoods.
People experience realities which statisticians’ numbers cannot reveal.
The planet is heating up inexorably.
It cannot take the pressure of the present consumptive model of economic growth any longer.
More economic growth will not solve the world’s problems. It must be sustainable and equitable too.
A new paradigm is required for global governance.
In 2015, all countries adopted the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to be achieved by 2030. Time is running out.
Climate change is racing ahead.
Rich countries are unwilling to find equitable solutions.
Precarity of employment is increasing even in rich countries.
The SDGs describe 17 complex combinations of environmental, social, and economic problems.
All 17 problems do not appear in every country, and when they do, they do not appear in the same form.
For example, problems of the oceans are immediately life-threatening to island countries but not to landlocked countries as yet.
Environmental problems are not the same in Canada and Barbados.
Opportunities for decent work (SDG 8) are inadequate everywhere, but much fewer in countries in the Global South than in the rich North.
No country has only one of the SDG problems; every country has at least six or seven.
Calculations show that even seven problems (out of a possible 17) can combine in 98 million different ways.
Clearly, one global solution for the environment, society, or economy, cannot apply everywhere.
The present theory-in-use of top-down problem-solving is conceptually flawed.
It does not matter how smart the expert or manager on top of the system is.
Importance of local governance
Complex systemic problems that appear in many places require local systems solutions that are found using cooperation and implemented by communities that combine solutions to economic, environment, and social problems.
India has proposed an approach of LiFE (lifestyles for sustainable development) to the G-20.
It requires “coherent actions amongst stakeholders at all levels rooted in collective actions across society”.
Principle 7 of LiFE also requires the world’s leaders to “recognize and amplify the role of local communities, local and regional governments and traditional knowledge in supporting sustainable lifestyles”.
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