Global Redesign Initiative

About the initiative

The product of a year-long dialogue and group of task forces involving over 1,500
academic, business, governmental and civil society experts and decision-makers from
around the world, the Forum’s Global Redesign Initiative produced 58 specific proposals on
international economic, environmental and security cooperation.
Draft findings and recommendations were discussed at the Annual Meeting 2010 in Davos
on the 40th anniversary of the World Economic Forum. A final report was released at a
special intergovernmental and multistakeholder meeting, the Global Redesign Summit, held
in Doha, Qatar, in May 2010. The report elaborates the parameters of an optimal system of
global cooperation as well as a set of pragmatic, actionable steps in specific areas of
international cooperation:
• Systemic recommendations – Broad guidelines and concrete proposals to
improve the systemic coherence and impact of global institutions and arrangements,
including an elaboration of the shared values and changes in political culture that are
crucial to achieving effective global cooperation in the 21st century
• Issue-specific recommendations – Proposals to reform or redesign structures
and arrangements of international cooperation in individual problem areas
Writing in the report’s overview chapter, Forum Managing Director Richard Samans,
Executive Chairman and Founder Klaus Schwab and former Vice-Chairman Lord Malloch-
Brown conclude: “Even as governments develop their exit strategies from fiscal and
monetary stimulus measures applied during the crisis, they should engage in an effort to
absorb the larger meaning of the changes that have transformed the international community
during the past generation and rendered much of its cooperative architecture not fully fit for
purpose.”
The Forum proposes a “blueprint for renovating international cooperation in an era of
increasingly complex interdependence, rendering it both more effective and legitimate”
based on the many proposals that have emerged from the Global Redesign process.
The proposals may not necessarily express a consensus, but reflect the diversity of the
participants engaged in this initiative. The World Economic Forum has had the final editorial
responsibility, which it exercised on the basis of intellectual integrity by emphasizing
expertise, knowledge and creativity, and by preserving its status as an impartial,
independent organization.
Following a public announcement of the findings and recommendations, the Forum will
stimulate a vigorous discussion around the world, through extensive use of new and
traditional media, on the potential for and necessity of major improvements in global
cooperation. The different stakeholders of the World Economic Forum and particularly the
Global Agenda Councils of experts will continue to act as “monitoring boards” for
implementation, and as continuous drivers for necessary adjustments and improvements.

Global Redesign: Strengthening International Cooperation in a More

Interdependent World, edited by Richard Samans, Klaus Schwab and Mark Malloch-
Brown: http://goo.gl/ml81J

1
Selected proposals
economic cooperation
benchmarking
Broaden Application of Benchmarking Metrics and Evidence-
Based Policymaking-Tools
International initiative to strengthen the quality and broaden the application of
benchmarking metrics and other evidence-based policy-making tools as a means of
improving the demand for and accountability of performance against economic reform
objectives.

corruption
Global "Supply-Side" Anti-Corruption Partnership

Creation of a global multistakeholder partnership to scale the supply side (i.e., business)
commitment to a zero tolerance policy with respect to bribery as a complement to
official demand side efforts by governments to strengthen policy in this respect.

monetary
Global Financial Safety Net

Significant strengthening of the global financial safety net, including through reforms of
the IMF's Articles of Agreement that would authorize the International Monetary and
Financial Committee (IMFC) at the request of the Managing Director to issue Special
Drawing Rights for the provision of emergency liquidity in times of financial distress.

migration
Global Partnership to Replicate Model Migration and Skills
Development Policies
Creation of new multilateral and multistakeholder forum/organization to pool capabilities
of Ios, businesses, academia, NGOs to identify win-win migration/talent mobility models
currently in place and stimulate their replication and expansion in different regions
through analysis, informal dialogue and concrete partnerships

employment
Initiative to Implement ILO Decent Work Agenda / Global Jobs
Pact / G20 Labor Ministerial Declaration

Major expansion of the capacity of the ILO and multilateral development banks to help
developing countries strengthen domestic institutions relevant to employment generation
and wage progress as well as the provision of basic retirement, health and
unemployment insurance systems, as called for by the ILO's Decent Work Agenda.

trade
Plurilateral Trade Agreements / Review of Regional and Bilateral
Free-Trade Agreements
Establishment of a WTO protocol on plurilateral trade agreements and a review of
regional free trade and preference agreements to strengthen guidelines ensuring their
consistency with the long-term vitality of the multilateral trading system.

financial risk data

Public-Private Financial Risk Repository

New public-private financial risk information repository that would improve the
aggregation of systemically relevant data across the international financial system for the
benefit of regulators.

financial regulation
Systemic Financial Risk Watchdog

Creation of a global systemic financial risk watchdog with the necessary authority to
sound and compel a response to alarm bells, while respecting the regulatory purview of
national authorities and building on the institutional framework that has been constructed
in the wake of the financial crisis.
development cooperation
mining
Fair Mineral Mining Development Agreements

Model framework for Fair Mineral Development Agreements that would establish best
practice regarding both the negotiating process for and content of resource extraction
agreements in developing countries.

nutrition
Food, Agriculture and Nutrition Design Initiative

Creation of a Global Food, Agriculture and Nutrition Redesign Initiative to provide an

action-oriented strategy and set of high profile partnerships to increase the diet quality
of the poor and particularly the nutritional status of children under the age of two.

fragile states
Fragile States Dual Oversight Agency

Creation of a dual-oversight agency where responsibility is shared between state

authorities and external funders in order to meet the urgent needs of the population in
fragile states through the delivery of essential social and economic services, while
building sustainable and accountable systems of public authority.

aid partnership
Global Aid Partnership for Innovation

Improving dialogue and cooperation among the overlapping public, private and civil
society networks of aid funders and providers, including the creation of a Global Aid
Partnership for Innovation that would promote a yearly marketplace for the funding and
systematic evaluation of innovative approaches to development assistance.

health
Global Health Governance (Coordination, Metrics, Capacity)

Set of proposals to strengthen global health governance, including an annual multi-actor

Global Health Summit adjacent to the WHO's intergovernmental World Health Assembly;
a Partnership for Health Risk Accountability and Health Data Charter to create a more
rigorous analytical foundation for such planning; a strengthening of the normative and
coordinating role of the WHO and clearer division of labour among health agencies; and
coalitions on specific challenges, including on the malnutrition of under-two children,
chronic diseases, and health workforce shortages.

intellectual property
Global Responsibility License

Expand access to intellectual property relevant to poverty alleviation and humanitarian

assistance while preserving protection for commercial uses.
humanitarian assistance
New Humanitarian Business Model

Creation of a new humanitarian business model that emphasizes tri-sector national and
regional partnerships to pre-emptively reduce disaster-related risks and strengthen
disaster response capabilities.

education
Strategic Review of the Education for All Architecture

Reformulate the governance and supporting institutional architecture of the Education

for All effort through a multistakeholder review of its governance, financing and
institutional capacity, including a call to action to G20 leaders to engage education,
development and finance ministries in the review, as well as a first set of targeted
initiatives in the areas of teacher training, North-South university cooperation, and
informal learning.
sustainability cooperation
low carbon
Enabling Architecture for Low-Carbon Energy Transformation

Creation of:
* regional, public-private climate investment funds that leverage large-scale private
institutional capital flows into low-carbon energy systems in developing countries
through the scaled application of the public finance and risk mitigation tools of
development finance institutions.
* a global platform for intra-industry cooperation on energy efficiency via the addition of
a private sector dimension to the International Partnership for Energy Efficiency
Cooperation (IPEEC), potentially leading to a set of globally-accepted minimum energy
efficiency standards on a limited but critical range of energy intensive industrial and
consumer goods.
* international public-private portfolios of up to 25 carbon capture and sequestration and
10 large-scale integrated smart grid demonstration projects across different regulatory
regimes to accelerate the development and commercial readiness of these promising
technologies.
* support for the low-carbon growth of developing countries, including through the
creation of a Consultative Group for International Energy Research and a process to
ready an operational framework for large-scale avoided deforestation and land use
change projects and programmes.
* a Joint Project of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) with the
business-NGO Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB) to develop a principles-
based international financial reporting standard for corporate climate disclosure suitable
for ultimate adoption by regulators as well as a similar public-private collaboration to
create a global standard for the labelling of emission footprints on consumer products,
building on work also already under way in the nongovernmental community.

oceans
Ocean Governance

Significant expansion of Marine Protected Areas, including Large Ocean Reserves, as

well as a formal review of the adequacy of the Law of the Sea Treaty and Fish Stocks
Agreement in view of the ongoing degradation of major fisheries around the world. They
also propose new mechanisms to strengthen monitoring and enforcement and an
Ocean Health Index to strengthen the information available for setting priorities and
tracking progress with respect to the protection of marine life.

SEFTA
Sustainable Energy Free Trade Area

Creation of a sectoral free trade arrangement for sustainable energy products and
services that would eliminate tariffs and harmonize standards as well as begin to
discipline domestic fossil fuel subsidies.

water
Water Resources Group

New international multistakeholder platform to help water-stressed countries and regions

transform the management of their water resources, supported by an unparalleled
network of public, civil society and private expertise.
security cooperation
elections
Citizen Participation in Election Monitoring

New organization to strengthen domestic capacity to replicate mass citizen participation

in the monitoring and reporting of election irregularities through crowd-sourcing
technologies.

energy
Energy Security Forum and Global Civilian Nuclear Fuel Cycle
Partnership
Creation of a new intergovernmental energy security forum encompassing producing
and consuming nations and providing a platform for the identification of areas of
potential cooperation on a wide range of energy challenges. Creation of a global public-
private partnership to manage the civilian nuclear fuel cycle as a means of reducing the
risk of nuclear weapons proliferation as additional countries engage in nuclear power
generation.

terrorism
Global Alliance Against Nuclear Terrorism

Creation of a Global Alliance Against Nuclear Terrorism composed of states that commit
to secure all nuclear weapons and materials to a "gold standard" beyond the reach of
terrorists or thieves by embedding principles of "assured nuclear security" and "nuclear
accountability".

risk
Global Risk Management Dialogue

High-level, inclusive dialogue including business, political and civil society leaders to
develop better institutions and networks to support global risk management.

human rights
Responsibility to Protect Institutional Capacity

Series of steps to strengthen particularly the non-military institutional capacity required

for the effective prevention of mass atrocities under the UN Responsibility to Protect
framework.

internet security
World Wide Web Resilience

Framework to encouarge the self-associating mobilization of cooperation to respond to

specific threats and generally strengthen the resilience of the World Wide Web.
values
social entrepreneurship
Consultative Group for Research to Advance Social
Entrepreneurship
Analogous to the role the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) plays in the
microfinance sector. It would have the specific mission of conducting research and
promoting policies that maximize the benefits of social entrepreneurship to society.

ad council
Global Ad Council

A global community of marketing, media, entertainment, and technology industries,

modelled on Ad Councils that already exist in the USA and a few other nations, to
expand public education and advocacy in support of initiatives and reforms that advance
progress on shared, long-term objectives in the global public interest.

business oath
Global Business Oath

Creation of a modernday Hippocratic Oath for business that spells out a commitment to
doing no harm through the practice of management. It commits mangers and graduates
of business schools throughout the world to a common code of ethics and to raise their
awareness of ethical values such as integrity, honesty, reliability and responsibility. The
project is developing a series of practices that help Oath takers to live the Oath on an
ongoing, lifelong basis.

citizen engagement
Global Citizen Engagement Initiative

General mobilization of information and communications technology tools to strengthen

democratic participation at all levels of government in the form of a Global Citizen
Engagement Initiative.

gender gap
Institute to Close Gender Gaps

Institute to serve as a central and trusted source of scientific evidence for what works in
closing gender gaps, compiling information on successful practices in governmental,
business and civil society institutions and consolidating these learnings so they can be
more easily replicated and scaled.

economy dialogue
Moral Economy Dialogue

Dialogue with 3 tracks: with leaders in business government and society using the World
Economic Forum as a platform; at the grass roots within faith communities; and at the
2012 G20 Leaders meeting involving senior government, business, civil society and faith
leaders.
social competitiveness
Social Competitiveness Index

Index to benchmark countries according to the effectiveness of their legal, fiscal and
cultural environment with respect to the promotion of social innovation e.g., social
enterprise, corporate social responsibility, philanthropy and social investment.

systemic
g20 deal
These negotiations are all apparently unable to progress much further within their
respective ministerial processes. Yet in the aggregate, they would yield major net
benefits for developing, emerging and advanced countries alike. It is therefore time for
G20 leaders to muster the political imagination necessary to assemble a package deal
providing each with the essential victory he or she requires to show additional flexibility in
areas of comparable political importance for colleagues. Leaders should dedicate
themselves in 2010/2011 to taking such synchronized, systemic leap forward in
international cooperation.

g20/un
Clarification of G20's ongoing role in and relationship with the
formal UN system
The G20 is an informal group and should remain so in order to preserve its intimacy,
wherein lies much of its potential to enhance system-wide effectiveness. However, it
needs to be embedded explicitly in the formal multilateral system in order to
demonstrate more clearly its commitment to acting in the general interest and being
accountable to the entire international community rather than simply the national
populations of its member countries. The report proposes a number of steps to anchor
the G20 in the multilateral system as well as rationalize participation and inculcate a
sense of systemic stewardship within it.

cooperation
Multidimensional cooperation

New framework for understanding the landscape of international cooperation and

potential levers of progress in an era of complex interdependence -- identification of
four key building blocks available to be built or strengthened for any given issue.

stakeholder paradigm
New stakeholder paradigm of international governance

The 1945 UN Charter explicitly identifies people, or society at large, as the ultimate
stakeholder of international governance, notwithstanding the role sovereign states play
as the central actors in the international system. The state-based core of the system
needs to be adapted to a more complex, bottom-up world in which non-governmental
actors have become a more significant force. But what is also required is a
corresponding sense of ownership in the health of the international system by these very
non-state stakeholders, which until now have tended, with the notable exception of
certain NGOs, to leave such matters entirely to their national governments. Most
important, these institutions should cultivate among their leaders before they become
leaders a keener awareness of how achievement of their objectives can be heavily
influenced by conditions in various areas of the international system. Those who
educate and select leaders of political, business, academic, religious, media and other
institutions social institutions, particularly graduate education programmes and boards of
directors and human resources departments, have the greatest responsibility in this
respect. Their curricula and senior talent development and promotion policies must
reflect that they are cultivating not only leaders of functional organizations but also
stewards of the international system and the contribution of their professional discipline
thereto. In support, society should measure better what it values and use such
information to stimulate ongoing dialogue among such leaders about the challenge of
integrating such values into the decisions they respectively face. Several concrete
proposals are made in this respect.

environmental governance
Rio + 20

Opportunity identified for step change in global environmental governance at Rio+20 by

focusing not on the traditional agenda (UN structure, new legal frameworks) but on a
new agenda to build the kinds of practical, building blocks that can accelerate progress
even in the absence of agreement on new multilateral legal obligations. Various Global
Agenda Councils, Industry Partner communities and YGL Task Forces have
independently put forward significant proposals to build enabling institutions, install
information systems, mobilize major coalitions and, in some cases, extend international
law in such areas as marine life and coral conservation; energy efficiency; low-carbon
technology development; deforestation; safe drinking water and sanitation; investor,
corporate and consumer carbon metrics; sustainable consumption and energy security.