With this week’s G8 summit focused on food prices, energy security and climate change, it’s a good moment to ask: is our fragmented multilateral system actually able to cope with such demanding issues? I’ve just finished a draft paper, entitled Multilateralism for an Age of Scarcity, on this very subject - which argues that the answer is no, but also that reform is feasible if we get the approach right.

The paper uses the shared operating system / shared awareness / shared platforms framework that David and I first set out in Shooting the Rapids - the paper that the Prime Minister’s Office commissioned from us for the Progressive Governance summit - and argues that the key challenge is to join up the dots between the institutions, processes and actors that we have now.  Part of this task involves expanding the scope of multilateralism to engage much more intensively with non-state actors, who can increasingly block multilateral processes if they feel their interests are threatened (the Irish referendum on Europe’s Lisbon Treaty being a case in point) - but who are also the key to making multilateral cooperation more effective.

I’m going to take a couple of months to put the draft around for review and comments, before publishing a revised version in late September or thereabouts. Comments would be very welcome - either here or via email (contact details on the Contact page).

Download the paper here.

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Comments

One Response to “New paper: Multilateralism for an Age of Scarcity”

  1. NYAGAKA NYAANGA on July 12th, 2008 3:24 pm

    African countries especially kenya and others have been ignored by developed countries on crucial matters of climate change, food security, economy whereby unfulfilled promises keep on piling one after another.civil society organizations from this countries play an important role in shaping nationaland international destiny but unfortunately lack financial support from the developed countries.