New Thinking for a New World

Even as the pandemic, like some giant glacier, slowly and unevenly recedes, the world seems frozen in place as it deals with the mess left behind. Increased poverty and malnutrition; greater inequality; damaged and depleted health care systems; rising social and political tensions. But is this a crisis or opportunity? Or, rather, are we smart enough and driven enough to turn what threatens to be a period of enormous strife—of the kind that often follows pandemics—into a new era of positive, life affirming change?

This week’s guests on the New Thinking for a New World podcast are dedicated to the latter proposition. They both are trying to make the world the kind of place it could and should be. Vidhya Ramalingam is a recognized expert on the use of technology to disrupt violent extremism online. Sarah Durieux focuses on mobilizing citizens online, to help them achieve policies they care about. They both also recently completed the Obama Foundation’s inaugural Emerging Leaders in Europe Program

A few weeks ago, Belarus shocked the world when it forced a commercial flight from Athens to Vilnius to land and seized two passengers, one a dissident journalist. But that outrage was only the most recent affront to international law and accepted state behavior by Belarusian autocrat, Alexander Lukashenko, and more importantly, his patron, Russia's Vladimir Putin. For years, Putin has pressed the countries along Russia’s border: cyber attacks on Estonia and Ukraine, war with Georgia and then Ukraine, the seizure of Crimea, constant air and naval border violations, as well as aggressive disinformation campaigns—all designed to sow chaos.

Lithuania is a frontline state in the growing confrontation—some think it is already war—between East and West. Dalia Bankauskaitė, a defense and security expert at Vilnius University, and Marius Laurinavičius, a journalist and analyst at the Vilnius Institute for Policy Analysis are both in that camp. Moreover, in this episode of the New Thinking for a New World podcast, they insist that Russia’s hostility, partly exercised through its puppet Belarus, is aimed not just at Lithuania, but at Europe and the United States.

Is this what war in the 21st century feels like? What do Putin and Lukashenko want? What should we do? What do YOU think?

2020 will be remembered as the Pandemic Year, when a deadly pathogen somehow moved from bat to human—and the rest is history still being written. Six out of 10 infectious diseases are zoonotic: everything from COVID and the other coronaviruses to rabies, West Nile, even the plague. In a Croesus-like effort to break the cycle, Denmark recently killed 17 million farmed mink to try to prevent further human infection—but that seems immoral as well as stupid.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka has a better idea. Dr Gladys, as she is known, believes that zoonotic disease is controllable by simultaneously working to improve the health of humans and animals, at the points where they meet. Her work, primarily with the mountain gorillas of Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, has contributed not only to resurgence in the gorilla population, but also to an improvement in the health and welfare of the human communities that live around the Park.

She explains her approach in this episode of New Thinking for a New World.

A case can be made that the Middle East is going through a realignment as significant as any since statesmen drew lines on maps after World War I or since the state of Israel was created in 1948.

New realities are emerging: peace instead of war among key Arab countries and Israel; reduced United States political and military engagement; reversal of militant Islamic fundamentalism; most importantly, growing confidence that local leaders—not those in Washington, London, Moscow, or elsewhere—can best produce peace, prosperity and security for the people in the region.

In this week’s New Thinking for a New World podcast episode, Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates long serving ambassador to the United States and also a key player in the process of creating this new Middle East, discusses the future of the Middle East.

By any measure, Latin American democracy is in trouble. From Mexico to Argentina—and most of the countries in between—there has been an accelerating erosion of both the forms and realities of representative democracy. Is the witches’ brew of the pandemic, underperforming economies, weak rule of law, and structural inequalities more than democracy can bear? Will things get worse before they get better?

Eduardo Amadeo, Argentine economist and politician; Sergio Guzman, Colombian political risk analyst and commentator; Patricio Navia, Chilean political scientist and academic have some answers. They think (and certainly hope) that democracy will survive in their countries and in their region.

Agriculture as it is practiced today—industrial scale ranching and farming—is already a huge contributor to the accelerating pace of climate change. Feeding a growing global population implies even greater greenhouse gas emissions, as well as energy, water and land usage. Moreover, the pandemic demonstrated the fragility and vulnerability of the global food supply chain, as worldwide economic, social, and trade dislocations led to food shortages, distribution problems, hunger, and malnutrition.

Is there a better alternative? Can we produce enough food to meet humanity's growing needs and wants, without further environmental damage? Is it possible to move the center point of the production process from the farm or the sea into the laboratory?

Our guest on this week's New Thinking for a New World podcast has positive answers to those questions. Didier Toubia is co-founder and CEO of Aleph Farms, a company based in Israel that grows steaks from cow cells. Real, honest-to-god, good tasting steaks—without the downsides of factory farming.

Africa is growing or, to be precise, Africa is growing more Africans. Projections show that by 2050 Africa's population is likely to double. By 2100 one in three people on Earth will be African, including almost half of global youth. But can Africa produce the food, energy, economic activity, education, and social and political stability that all those people, especially all those young people, need and deserve? And is democracy the best means to that end?

How is Africa doing? In one sense, that's a nonsensical question to ask about 55 countries and almost 1.4 billion people, but even dumb questions can sometimes have smart answers.

In this week's New Thinking for a New World podcast episode, Michela Wrong who has spent nearly three decades writing about Africa, as a journalist, and as an author, talks about the people, the politics, and the day-to-day realities. Her latest book, Do Not Disturb, takes a deep dive into President Paul Kagame’s Rwanda which can be read as a window into Africa’s present and its possible future.

Today’s world is short of a lot of things—sustainable environment, peace, prosperity, equality—but what we lack most is innovative, global, values-based leadership. If we can find and nurture that kind of leadership, the rest will follow.

Listen as two Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership prize winners and friends, scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur Fio Omenetto and social innovator and entrepreneur Bright Simons, discuss how great leaders can change everything.

What can you do? Take Fio and Bright’s call to action seriously and, then, nominate someone who deserves to win the leadership prize this year. Nominate your candidate here: https://tallberg-snf-eliasson-prize.org/nominate/

Filippino national hero Jose Rizal allegedly said that “Youth is the hope of our future.” When it comes to governance, is that a good thing in a world where there is a growing body of evidence that youth's satisfaction with democracy is declining in many countries? This decline—in absolute terms, as well as relative to how older generations felt at the same stages in their lives—may reflect understandable frustration with outcomes, rather than with the concept of representative democracy. But that makes it no less worrying.

If not democracy, then what? Government by technocrats? By “strong” leaders? By the wisdom of crowds?

This New Thinking for a New World podcast episode is part of Tällberg Foundation's exploration of the future of democracy. Is Churchill still right that democracy is the worst form of government, except for everything else? Listen as Cristóbal Marín Rojas, who comes from Bogota, Colombia, and Julien Richard, who is French, American and Austrian discuss the challenges of making democracy work. Both are students at the Paris School for International Affairs at Sciences Po.

Today's world is short of a lot of things—sustainable environment, peace, prosperity, equality—but what we lack most is innovative, global, values-based leadership. If we can find and nurture that kind of leadership, the rest will follow.

The Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize named in honor of Jan Eliasson, one of the most accomplished global diplomats of our era. In this special episode, Jan and Alan Stoga, chairman of the Tällberg Foundation discuss how great leaders can change everything.

What can you do? Take Jan’s call to action seriously and, then, nominate someone who deserves to win the leadership prize this year. Nominate your candidate here: https://tallberg-snf-eliasson-prize.org/nominate/

Music: "Without You" by Oxime © 2021. Permissions granted courtesy of Oxime Audio https://www.oxime-audio.com/