‘Once-in-a-generation opportunity’- that's how the United Nations describes the ‘Summit of the Future’ to be held in New York at the UN headquarters on 22-23 September 2024. The Summit is described as "a high-level event, bringing world leaders together to forge a new international consensus on how we deliver a better present and safeguard the future.”  Though this sounds like rhetorical words echoed all the time in UN meetings, the Summit  indeed is much needed at the time when global efforts on sustainable development is crippled amidst the two major ongoing armed conflicts and continued war on nature that has resulted in triple crisis-climate-biodiversity-pollution. 

Top it with  recently emerged trade-war between China on one hand Europe and  USA on the other. Curiously , the trade war is related to ‘green products’  including solar panels and EVs manufactured in China and sold to the USA and Europe . They are meant to save the planet from the climate crisis and not to blow away the enemy with weapons and drones!

Failure of UN system and196 nations

The 78th UN General Assembly (UNGA),  held last year from 19-26 September 2023, dealt with the longish and all-encompassing theme,  ‘Rebuilding trust and reigniting global solidarity: Accelerating action on the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals towards peace, prosperity, progress and sustainability for all’.  The Assembly also noted dismally that ‘the achievement of the SDGs is in peril’.  It recognised that most of the 17 SDGs are either moving much too slowly or have regressed below the 2015 baseline. Millions of people have fallen into poverty, hunger and malnutrition are becoming more prevalent, humanitarian-needs are rising, the impacts of climate change are becoming more pronounced leading to not only our collective failure to reach the climate goals but shaking the world with massive cross boundary migration and terrorism. That has aggravated inequality, weakened international solidarity and a shortfall of trust among nations. 

It is the scenario that conveys not only the failure of 196 nations who are members of the UN but also the stark malfunction of the framework of  the present UN which was created after World War II with the aim to achieve peace in the world. Not surprisingly, 2023-UNGA closed by stating a rather lame conclusion, ‘we look forward to the Summit of the Future in 2024 as an important opportunity to, inter alia, accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and its SDGs’. 

What is expected from the Summit?

Interestingly, ‘Action Days’ designed by the UN on  20-21 September have preceded the Summit. Probably, for the first time in UN history ‘actions’ have preceded, at least on paper, the ‘declarations’ which would come out of the Summit of the world leaders. Needless to say that ‘draft declarations’ from the Summit are already published by the UN and available to the public. What needs to be done now in the Summit is just to tinker with the words and probably refer to key sentences from speeches of the world leaders and UN Organisations. The proposal for a Summit of the Future originated in the Our Common Agenda report prepared by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres at the request of Member States for ideas on how better to respond to current and future challenges.

The overarching purpose of the Summit in 2024 is  to reaffirm the UN Charter, reinvigorate multilateralism and restore the trust amidst the new challenges and agree on solutions. The objective  of the Summit is two dimensional. First accelerate efforts to meet our existing international commitments, and second take concrete steps to respond to emerging challenges and opportunities. The world leaders will adopt the ‘Pact for the Future’, which will include a ‘Global Digital Compact’ and a ‘Declaration on Future Generations’  as annexes. Summit is expected to  produce a new international consensus on how we deliver a better present and safeguard the future.

Effectiveness of United Nations in crisis is the subject of long-standing research. Whatever is the finding of the research that spans for more than 75 years, it is true that a UN outcome  is what nations of the world decide and agree on. It is another matter that ‘Nations’ are many times not ‘United’ in making UN decisions, relevant to the present situation and ready for the future. All the decisions are not implemented and the goals are not achieved due to unfulfillment of promises given by the countries. The Paris Climate Agreement is a ‘burning and hot’ example. Right from Climate Convention of 1992 and Kyoto Protocol of 1997 to the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015, the world for last 32 years is unable to bend the rising curve of carbon-dioxide emissions and other Green House Gases (GHGs) that have  caused havoc on the planet and resulted in climate chaos.

Limited success, repeated failures

There have been, contrary to popular belief, successful exceptions in the UN history, cited often, of one global agreement that provides the fresh ray of hope due to the fact that the agreed global goals were achieved in time.  That exception is the multilateral environmental agreement called Montreal Protocol on the substances that deplete the stratospheric ozone layer. The ozone layer acts as a shield to protect the ecosystem on the earth from the sun’s UV rays. World succeeded in banning and halting the production of the man-made chemicals that deplete the ozone layer. The ozone layer is now on the way to recovery and global catastrophe has been avoided. Sadly, the nations are unable to repeat that success.

Amidst the limited successes and repeated failures, the convening power of the UN is undeniable. That power of the UN was able to produce positive results during the COVID-19. The same power is able to partly prevent loss of lives in many regions through the World Food Programme and UN Peacekeeping Forces. Convening global leaders on a single platform in face of their different political ideologies and even their dictatorial orientations proves that the UN is the only game in the town. The timing for the Summit of the Future is also undeniably opportune. It is the moment to mend the ways, shift the focus, refill the eroded trust and demonstrate that international cooperation can effectively achieve agreed goals and tackle emerging threats and opportunities.

Can one shape a better world?

Effective global cooperation is increasingly critical to our survival but difficult to achieve in an atmosphere of mistrust, particularly due to the UN's inability to transform outdated structures like the Security Council that no longer reflect today’s political and economic realities. Will the Summit of the Future therefore  bring world leaders together when the world is torn and hopelessly divided?  And is there a better way to shape our world than keep holding the Summits for the Future?

The past offers some insight. There is strong evidence that poverty, hunger, conflicts, wars, inequality and terrorism all have roots in the way humanity continues to be in conflict with nature. It is strongly believed that though the UN has prevented World War III among the nations, it has not been able to prevent World War III between humanity and nature. In 1972 the link between poverty and environmental damage was first pointed out in the Stockholm Summit on the Human Environment by India’s PM Indira Gandhi. Twenty years later in 1992, the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on Environment and Development saw the Rio Declaration, Agenda 21 Forest Principles, Convention on Biodiversity, Convention on Climate Change and Convention to Combat Desertification. It also saw the birth of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD).

Thirty-two years after Rio and 52 years after Stockholm, the UN for more than 75 years is unable to make the world a sustainable place to live. Official promises given by the rich and powerful countries in the multilateral agreements, mainly on finances and technology transfer, are not kept. The conferences and summits have proliferated, reports and reviews have mushroomed, but the crisis continues and even intensifies.

The hope for a better and more sustainable future now lies, first with the youth in the ages of 18-25, studying in the universities and higher education institutes. These youth would be the young decision-makers by 2030. That year would see the end of SDGs and expected to halve the GHGs emissions. By 2050, the youth of today would be at the helm of the affairs in business and government. Therefore, the need to educate and skill them in the education campus itself for achieving SDGs and Net Zero, starting from their campuses, in family, in business and in governments. Second, let selective youth from universities be the country delegates from their  countries to reform the framework of the United Nations.  They have the potential to reform the way the Security Council works, not allowing the countries to get away with the unkept promises without punitive measures and reform the ways in which  solidarity, justice and sustainability need to be promoted. The UN Charter does not need to be changed. Instead, the UN has to charter a new way.

(The author is a noted environmentalist, former Director UNEP, and Founder Director, Green TERRE Foundation, Pune, India who has pioneered the Net Zero Campus idea. Views are personal. He can be reached at shende.rajendra@gmail.com)