Date/Time Date(s) - 03/03/20252:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Location KTH B105
The contemporary crises faced by humanity require a new kind of international agreement. One which will prevent accelerating climate change from ruining the world for future generations, deescalate nationalisms which risk precipitating further global conflicts, and address economic and social inequities which undermine the basis of democracy and good governance. One which will remove the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons and place global security on international agreements securing freedom and democracy for all nations. This is a world which the UN, as currently constituted, with its decision-making capacities paralyzed by the veto powers of its permanent Security Council members, cannot achieve. If, as noted by UN Secretary-General Guterres, “global governance is stuck in time and we cannot effectively address problems as they are if institutions don´t reflect the world at it is” then what should a new UN Charter look like, to modernize our global governance architecture and empower the UN to help us address the myriad global catastrophic risks which threaten our future?
Augusto Lopez-Claros is Executive Director of the Global Governance Forum. He is an international economist with over 30 years of experience in international organizations, including most recently at the World Bank. For the 2018-2019 academic years Lopez-Claros was on leave from the World Bank as a Senior Fellow at the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Between 2011 and 2017 he was the director of the World Bank’s Global Indicators Group, one of the departments within the Bank’s research Vice Presidency. Previously he was chief economist and director of the Global Competitiveness Program at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, where he was also the editor of the Global Competitiveness Report, the Forum’s flagship publication. Before joining the Forum, he worked for several years in the financial sector in London, with a special focus on emerging markets. He was the International Monetary Fund’s Resident Representative in Russia during the 1990s.
Educated in England and the United States, he received a diploma in Mathematical Statistics from Cambridge University and a PhD in Economics from Duke University. Recent publications include “Removing Impediments to Sustainable Economic Development: The Case of Corruption” (2015), Equality for Women = Prosperity for All (2018, St. Martin’s Press) and Global Governance and the Emergence of Global Institutions for the 21st Century (2020, Cambridge University Press). His book Global Governance and International Cooperation: Managing Global Catastrophic Risks in the 21st Century, coedited with Richard Falk, has just been published by Routledge (2024). Lopez-Claros has lectured at some of the world’s leading universities, think tanks and international organizations; a list of recent lectures can be found at: www.augustolopezclaros.com.
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