Daniel Perell currently serves as a co-chair of the Steering Group of the Coalition for the UN We Need, an umbrella group of civil society organizations that are collaborating to modernize the UN system, to better adapt it to the needs of the 21st century. He is thus extremely well-qualified to share insights into the forthcoming UN Summit of the Future and the extent to which it might become a catalyst for future transformational innovations, desperately needed in a world increasingly destabilized by climate change, entrenched nationalisms, persistent poverty and inequality and other such global challenges. In this wide-ranging podcast, he shares keen insights on the way forward and how to make the transition from reaffirming important principles embedded in the UN Charter to implementing a broader and more ambitious vision of reforms that will deliver actual solutions to the problems we face.

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As co-president of the Club of Rome Sandrine Dixson-Declève is singularly well-qualified to speak to the major challenges we confront today and on which, in the search for solutions, we need much stronger levels of international cooperation. Widening income disparities have started to undermine social and political stability, the needs of the extremely poor are not being met, and we are failing to stem the worst consequences of climate change. There is no shortage of solutions, from better use of the tax system to lower income inequality, to the phasing out of wasteful energy and other subsidies, to the use of innovative instruments to finance the transition to a green economy. What is lacking is enlightened leadership, more in tune with the needs of the many, a greater focus on longer-term solutions not driven by short-term profit considerations, and the recognition that the economic and political empowerment of women is vital for the creation of a more secure and stable world.

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Sundeep Waslekar is a distinguished social scientist who has thought a great deal about the causes and the instruments of war and the risks they pose to the future of humankind. He is the recent author of A World Without War, a book published by HarperCollins in which he argues that while the risks of nuclear holocaust have perhaps never been higher, we can reverse course and not commit collective suicide. We need to abandon narrow-minded nationalisms and develop dual loyalties to our nation and the world, where the problems we face required a renewed unity of purpose. In this podcast he convincingly makes the case that “It is possible to turn death into life. It is possible to convert violence into peace. It is possible to transform darkness into light. It is possible to change despair into hope. It is possible to end wars and unite the world.”

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