Join #KAPTalks lecturer Richard Kozul-Wright, Director of the Globalisation and Development Strategies Division in United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), to make sense of these developments. What deeper changes in the governance of the international economy will be needed if more inclusive and sustainable outcomes are to be realized?
Under the best of international circumstances, the policy challenges posed by cascading crises would be daunting. But we are far from the “best”.
In a world already fractured by a health pandemic and trade tensions, the war in Ukraine has deepened divisions; trust and solidarity between governments – key pillars of a stable international order – appear to be in short supply. At the same time, the institutions of global economic governance–tasked since 1945 with mitigating global shocks, delivering international public goods and providing a global financial safety net–have been hampered by insufficient resources and policy tools and options that are “rigid and old fashioned”.
Effective global governance in support of shared goals cannot be limited to formal talk of a "rules-based international order”.
Achieving these goals requires a set of common principles and effective mechanisms that can help mobilise resources and coordinate policies in countries with very different government and private sector capacities. The agenda for that discussion arises from unresolved international development dilemmas (in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and recent UN development reports) in a fractured world, and in the context of the many crises and challenges currently facing the international community.
Richard Kozul-Wright is the director of UNCTAD’s globalization and development strategies division.
He has worked at the UN in both New York and Geneva and published widely on economic issues, including in the Economic Journal, the Cambridge Journal of Economics, the Journal of Development Studies, and the Oxford Review of Economic Policy.
He has co-written books such as The Resistible Rise of Market Fundamentalism with Paul Rayment and co-edited volumes of Transnational Corporations and the Global Economy, Economic Insecurity and Development, Securing Peace, Climate Protection and Development and Industrial Policy.
He also co-edited Transforming Economies: Making Industrial Policy Work for Growth, Jobs and Development with the International Labour Organization.
He holds a PhD degree in economics from the University of Cambridge in the UK.
