The Global Governance Reform Agenda

United Nations Member States are finalizing deliberations on the Pact for the Future, the centerpiece of the Summit of the Future (September 20–23). Alongside a Global Digital Compact and a Declaration for Future Generations, the Pact will aim to reshape global governance and ensure it is fit for purpose in an increasingly multipolar world.

What are the global reforms needed to make this a transformative moment? What specific reforms or proposals will help ensure the Summit and Pact result in meaningful shifts in power and effectiveness, particularly within a strained multilateral system? We ask five of our experts for their perspectives.

The world has changed a lot in the last 75 years, but the international institutions built after World War II to facilitate cooperation, promote prosperity, and manage crises have not. The system needs updating. Intensifying geopolitical tensions, technological disruption, and the existential threat of climate change make that project more urgent than ever. 

The Pact for the Future contains commitments and proposals for reforming, strengthening, and expanding multilateral institutions. Three cross-cutting priorities stand out.

• Shifting power to developing countries and small states. Imbalances in power and representation fuel inequities and distrust that hobble international cooperation. The Pact calls for (1) reform of the international financial architecture to benefit developing countries, and (2) reform of different UN organs (including the Security Council) to better represent developing countries and small and medium-sized states and advance their priorities.
• Advancing networked multilateralism. This concept, a favorite of Secretary-General Guterres, refers to strengthening ties both within and between different levels of the multilateral system—UN bodies and agencies, regional groups, clubs of nations, and other international networks—as well as with other global actors, such as civil society and the private sector. Despite the return of great power geopolitics, nation-states hold a declining share of global power, resources, and policymaking capacity. Effective global governance depends on making the multilateral system more open and inclusive of non-state players. 
• Preparing for an unstable future. The multilateral system’s ability to manage the polycrisis depends in part on anticipating and preparing for emergent risks, shocks, and challenges in new domains. The Pact calls for adopting foresight tools, developing indicators of long-term wellbeing (beyond GDP), accelerating Outer Space governance, and creating emergency platforms to quickly respond to global shocks.   

The Pact offers feasible proposals for achieving these three priorities. The future of multilateralism hinges on whether and how member states implement them.

Climate is the intersectional issue of our time. Climate is a conflict issue, an energy issue, a gender and development issue, a biodiversity issue, and, sadly, an issue that will shape youth and future generations. The success of the Pact for the Future will be judged by how climate is interwoven across the myriad of challenges shaping this century.

Failing on climate will put sustainable development goals out of reach. After more than a year at or above 1.5° C, common but differentiated climate impacts are intensifying, creating roughly $38 trillion in damages globally each year. Today, climate negatively impacts every sustainable development goal, with only 17 percent of goals and 0 percent of climate goals likely to be achieved by 2030. Climate conflicts are growing over water, exacerbating existing livelihood insecurities. The draft Pact for the Future underscores how most global challenges are also climate challenges. 

It reinforces the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit warming to no more than 1.5°C and goals from the Global Stocktake at COP28 to triple renewables and phase out fossils and fossil fuel subsidies. It calls for efforts to expand climate financing via the new collective quantified goal, a cornerstone of COP29 in Baku this November. It uniquely calls out debt burdens, which have made nations with steep debt unable to address the slew of climate impacts today. In 2023, global public debts reached $97 trillion globally. Governments unable to provide for their citizens are more likely to see regime change and conflict as social contracts break. We saw this unfold during the Arab Spring and could likely see it unfold in debt-burdened nations as climate impacts amplify in a 1.5° C+ world. 

If endorsed, the Pact will send a clear message to upcoming global forums like COP29 to increase ambition. It would encourage multilateral and bilateral side commitments for more finance, steeper emissions cuts, and a quicker phase out of fossil fuel subsidies. While these nods for raising ambition are invaluable, it does not change the fact that the international political institutions that have governed since the close of World War II must adapt to be fit for purpose in a multipolar world faced with a new and unprecedented polycrisis. It’s the put up or shut up moment for the United Nations, and the Pact can charter a new climate-forward path to get there. 

The third paragraph of the Global Digital Compact outlines what is arguably the central and most intractable tension at the heart of the global digital ecosystem: the tradeoffs between the possibilities and risks offered by technology. Unlike the early, idealistic days of the internet, technology governance can no longer be guided by absolute principles or utopian ideologies. Governments—and the world—face difficult decisions about how to balance competing goals, and how to practically resolve tensions between competing desirable (or undesirable) outcomes. 

A document such as the Compact, which reflects compromises between stakeholders with wildly varying views, may not provide the best road map for these tough, practical decisions. It is no disparagement of the Compact—or of the tremendous effort that has gone into its drafting—to say that it is replete with largely unobjectionable goals and statements that reflect near-universal consensus. What practical, actionable steps can be taken to ensure that at least some progress is made toward the objectives and principles stated at the outset of the document? 

Above all, governments must make a concerted effort to ensure meaningful participation by all nations and communities within global processes and institutions that guide technology policymaking. As noted, achieving the right balance between risk and possibility is a matter of tradeoffs; it is essential that all stakeholders be included in the deliberations that decide on the appropriate nature of those tradeoffs.

The Compact’s focus on increasing capacity and skills is, therefore, key. It could lead to more meaningful and informed participation, especially for smaller, remote, and disadvantaged nations. Support for such nations must include increasing technical and regulatory capacity, and also financial support (for example, to ensure that representatives are able to travel to and participate in international fora). 

Some of the most thorny and most important policy issues involve data. Data is in many ways emblematic of the difficult tradeoffs at the heart of the digital ecosystem. The Compact’s goals of encouraging open data and enhancing data interoperability offer tremendous possibilities to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and hasten progress across a range of sectors. Data, in this sense, is a shared human public good. But data also has deeply private dimensions, and the determination to share or open up data is replete with risks to individual and human rights. Achieving the Compact’s goals will therefore require creating institutions and a framework for strong, innovative approaches to data governance. These priorities are all the more important in an age of AI; data is the lifeblood of AI.

Finally, human rights. For a consensus-driven document, the Compact is remarkably robust in its statements protecting human rights and various forms of freedom, including political. These protections are all the more remarkable given the growing number of nations—including many signing the Compact—that display increasing hostility to individual rights and freedoms. Yet a commitment to these freedoms is central to the Compact’s goal of an inclusive, empowering, and human-centered digital future. Finding ways to truly elevate and strengthen individual rights, even while maintaining the fragile consensus necessary for effective governance of the global internet, is therefore among the key challenges facing the international community.

“Digital rights must be anchored in human rights,” states the Global Digital Compact. Its emphasis on human rights at the center of internet governance is the pillar on which all other stipulations must rely. This human-centered lens encourages the prioritization of international cooperation through mechanisms such as cross-border data flows, interoperability, and an adherence to related intergovernmental frameworks. We can guarantee a healthy, global internet that incorporates human rights protections by taking actions like endorsing global digital trade rules such as the World Trade Organization Joint Initative’s recent Agreement on Electronic Commerce, or by expanding upon models such as the Data Free Flow with Trust framework to pave the way for investments in higher quality telecommunications infrastructure in more low-resourced countries.

It is also imperative for the Global Majority to have a presence at the table that crafts these types of agreements. Human rights violations are more explicit in many of these regions, where less stable public institutions and lack of private investment mean that these measures often fall short. Consumers in these countries are also prone to Western perceptions of being static objects rather than dynamic users with their own aspirations. The Pact should acknowledge digital rights challenges from the perspective of these users and contextualize solutions to the grassroots barriers faced in their respective ecosystems. Bridging digital divides means recognizing that poorer countries are just as much part of the conversation and development as richer ones, and their contributions to the research, development, and regulation can be just as important. The Pact should also continue to elaborate upon these initiatives by adopting more inclusive language that invites Global Majority stakeholders in rather than framing their constituents as targets to be met.

One of the most significant effects of any technology is in amplifying the status quo: what is good can become great, for example, by scaling up economic opportunities, democratizing public resources, promoting innovative ideas, and providing avenues to actualize those ideas; but what is bad may become worse, through proliferating disinformation and discrimination, widening socioeconomic divides, and exploitation of labor and the environment. The magnitude of this effect relies on governance measures that comply with international law, guarantee inclusive participation through funding and agenda-setting, and consult stakeholders in every layer of civil society. The direction, positive or negative, starts from recognition of human rights and how individuals navigate the digital technologies that amplify their reinforcement or exploitation.