The challenges we face are considerable: from rethinking our relationship with the environment, and the wide-reaching implications this has, to tackling the persistent inequalities and injustices that characterise our relationships with each other. The WFC has identified 24 key issues that it will seek to address. With each campaign the WFC will highlight the connections between these areas, and aim to integrate them into its policy recommendations.The global challenges can be roughly grouped into three categories:
Global Challenges
Environment
The key global challenges grouped together in this category concern our relationship with the planet that supports us. With limited natural resources, an increasingly urbanised and ever-growing population, and the looming threat of irreversible climate change, the need to reconsider the way we interact with our environment has never been more pressing. Paramount to this is the acknowledgement that we are a part of the global ecosystem and not its rulers.
Social Issues
The key global challenges grouped together in this category are concerned with ensuring that people across the world can lead healthy and fulfilled lives. This involves embracing the diversity of human traits and capabilities, and acknowledging that we are all equal and yet distinct.
Economics and Politics
The key global challenges grouped together in this category are concerned with the organisation of human societies and the relationships between them. This involves fair and peaceful exchange, and an equitable distribution of costs and benefits in the creation of global welfare.
Reform of International Institutions
After World War Two, the pre-war international system was largely replaced by one adapted to the new world order. It is unclear whether this system can still usefully serve today's very different world. There have been many proposals for UN reform, all blocked by lack of political will and sectoral interests. We need a global discussion on which international institutions have outlived their usefulness, which ones need reforms, and what new institutions are needed.
What can be learnt from the failures of global governance? Which are the urgent proposals for change for which a broad coalition could be mobilised? How can a sensible hierarchy of appropriate international agreements be implemented? How can the global majority cooperate better when faced with the growing obstruction of powerful countries? How can the interests of future generations influence the decision-making of international institutions? Should the proposals by Keynes for a fairer trade and financial institutional order be revived?