Mga Subtitle (175)
0:04The next time you take
an international trip, do me a favor.
0:08Take a look at your passport.
0:10On the cover, there’s your
country’s coat of arms.
0:14And then you open it,
and there’s your photograph.
0:16The best one you've ever taken, right?
0:20On that page, there's two lines
at the bottom.
0:24Letters and numbers.
That's called the machine-readable zone.
0:29Those two lines are magic.
0:32The product of international cooperation.
0:36Because without them,
you wouldn't be able to get on that plane.
0:39You wouldn't be able to cross immigration.
0:43You wouldn't be able
to travel the world, see your family.
0:47Now what I find fascinating
0:49is that those two lines
came about in 1980,
0:53when the International
Civil Aviation Organization
0:56set about standardizing passports.
0:59At the beginning, only three countries
adopted the standard.
1:04Today, just about every single country
has that standard.
1:09This is international
cooperation at its best.
1:13And it doesn't stop there.
1:16Some people will watch this talk
on the internet,
1:19or at least I hope they will.
1:22Well, did you know that, 160 years ago,
1:2520 countries came together
to lay the foundations
1:28of our global telecommunications networks?
1:31They founded something called
the International Telegraph Union,
1:37It's still active today,
although it's moved on from the telegraph.
1:42Even in times of conflict,
global cooperation continues.
1:47In the midst of the war in the Ukraine,
1:50representatives from the United States,
China, Europe, Asia, Africa,
1:55Latin America and Russia
1:58were sitting in the same room at the ITU,
2:01continuing to negotiate
things like internet protocols
2:05or global digital governance.
2:08Did you know that time zones exist
because of a multilateral agreement,
2:13or that green means "go"
because of a multilateral agreement?
2:18Our lives are made better
when countries collaborate.
2:23It is the infrastructure
of the modern world,
2:25and we can't live without it.
2:30we're facing a crisis of trust.
2:33Trust in the international system.
2:36I see this every day, because I work
with international organizations
2:40trying to make them more effective.
2:44And I'll be the first to admit
2:45that talking about multilateralism
and effectiveness in the same sentence
2:50sounds a bit complicated.
2:52Many think about these organizations
and they see a mesh of red tape,
2:56or they see endless bureaucracy
or political posturing.
3:00They wonder, is there any tangible impact?
3:04It's making people lose faith
in international organizations.
3:11In our constantly changing world,
3:13is it any surprise that the institutions
3:15crafted around the geopolitical realities
of the end of the Second World War,
3:21that those organizations
are struggling to keep up?
3:25It's making us ask, is international
cooperation even worth it?
3:32Well, I'm here to persuade you
that it absolutely is.
3:36I implore you, take another look.
3:39And I give you fair warning
that staying in the arena
3:43and giving multilateralism another go
3:45means one thing for sure.
3:47We cannot continue with business as usual.
3:51It is time to rethink, to reevaluate,
3:54to recalibrate how we collaborate
on a global scale.
3:58And in my humble opinion,
this starts with rebuilding trust.
4:07Allow me to offer
something rather provocative.
4:12We must stop insisting
on inviting everybody to the meeting.
4:18Sounds a bit hard,
I know, but hear me out.
4:23Imagine trying to get your slide deck
together, or your project budget,
4:28with 200 of your most well-meaning
colleagues working with you on it.
4:34Sounds pretty difficult, right?
4:38Which is why trying to negotiate anything
4:42with 193 countries at the outset
4:46and trying to achieve
global consensus on that issue
4:49will deliver one thing
for certain, if anything at all.
4:54And that is the least
objectionable outcome.
4:59But to rebuild trust ...
5:02and take on the most
difficult challenges of our time,
5:06we cannot settle for the least
objectionable outcome.
5:11We need the most ambitious,
the bold, the transformative outcomes.
5:16So let's take an alternative
and augmented path forward,
5:20one that is rooted
in the art of diplomacy,
5:23one that has served us for over a century,
but one which we seem to have lost.
5:28Let's unleash coalitions of the willing
5:32to show what 21st-century
multilateralism and cooperation
5:35can and should look like.
5:39I define coalitions of the willing
as small, dynamic groups
5:43of like-minded, and sometimes
not so like-minded, actors,
5:48They can be some combination of countries
from the South and the North,
5:53the East and the West.
5:56Civil society organizations,
academic institutions,
6:01religious organizations.
6:04And -- and this
is important -- businesses.
6:08They come together with shared purpose
6:11to solve a problem larger than themselves,
6:13a problem that requires
genuine collaboration
6:16and cocreation to solve,
6:19problems that require a committed group
to act first and to act boldly.
6:24The coalition takes on the risk,
it serves itself up as the guinea pig.
6:30It makes it easy for others to join in,
6:32and it pushes the snowball
down the mountain.
6:37This is how we've done
diplomacy for decades.
6:40We've just forgotten.
6:43I love this example from the 1950s,
when banks started issuing credit cards.
6:49There was one problem.
6:51Some cards were small,
some cards were large.
6:54Some were made of paper, some of plastic.
6:57There was no interoperability.
7:00So a few of them came together --
7:04American Express, Diners Club
and a few others.
7:07They came together and they adopted
a uniform standard for a credit card.
7:13So what you have
in your wallet today is standard.
7:16It has your name and a number on the front
and a metallic strip on the back.
7:20And then, they worked
with countries to enshrine this
7:24in the International
Standards Organization.
7:28So today, when you go to a restaurant
and you tap your card,
7:31or you go to an ATM machine
and you take out some cash,
7:35if people still do that ...
7:38you trust that it's going to work.
7:41But you don’t attribute that
to multilateralism or to the ISO
7:48or to a coalition of the willing.
7:51But that's how it started.
7:53Imagine we had to renegotiate,
or start afresh negotiating,
7:57what a standard credit card
looks like today.
8:00What would that look like?
8:02Insisting on inviting everybody
to the meeting?
8:07and the idea would be put to a committee.
8:09The committee would run consultations,
8:12endless consultations
with hundreds of actors --
8:15those that are super-relevant
and those that are less relevant.
8:20Then, it would craft a convention
or a resolution or a compact,
8:24and put that forward
for 193 countries to negotiate.
8:28There would be co-facilitators
appointed to run this process.
8:33Their objective would be to reach
global consensus among 193 countries.
8:42The least objectionable outcome.
8:46Which is why today, we need to start
with coalitions of the willing
8:52to make things work
ambitiously for the future.
8:57I would be so energized
to see the United Nations
9:00or other multilateral organizations
invite coalitions of the willing
9:05to take on some of our most
difficult challenges --
9:09AI governance, migration, food security.
9:15It's not happening at the rate
we want it to happen,
9:18but it is actually happening,
and I have a lot of hope.
9:22One example that gives me
a lot of hope is the LEAF Coalition,
9:26the Lowering Emissions
by Accelerating Forest Finance Coalition.
9:30It started with a handful
of countries that were donors,
9:34a handful of countries that had forests,
a handful of corporations
9:39and a handful of civil-society
organizations.
9:42They all came together
and they sat at a table, a small table ...
9:48and they tried to figure out,
what do we do about deforestation?
9:51How do we protect biodiversity?
9:57And so they didn't wait for 200 countries
10:00to negotiate the last clause of a treaty.
10:05They put billions of dollars on the line,
10:08and they created a new market
for protecting nature.
10:12And now everyone is rushing in
to join that coalition.
10:16This is what 21st century multilateralism
10:19and international cooperation
can and should be.
10:24And so we have a choice.
10:26Should we stay together
and take this new path forward,
10:30or should we walk away?
10:33I hope we stay together.
