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At the heart of the international system lies a seemingly intractable tension between sovereignty and cooperation. The United Nations is a collection of states that, while recognizing the need for collaboration in global governance, still seek to retain their independence. This tension haunts the international community as a whole, but it is the people of the future who will pay the heaviest price.

The major challenges facing humanity in the 21st century are borderless and intergenerational. Climate change will wreak havoc in every corner of the world and will only grow worse if we fail to act now. Similarly, lawlessness in cyberspace threatens people’s liberty and security with no respect for borders, and especially harms the world’s young people. Such challenges can only be tackled through “networked, inclusive and effective multilateralism,” as United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres put it.

Nevertheless, actors in the international system, clinging to outdated fears about losing their independence, are stymying cooperation. In doing so, they risk two terrible consequences.

First, resisting cooperation will likely damage their own self-interest in the long run, a phenomenon that Inge Kaul, the former director of the United Nations Development Program, calls the “sovereignty paradox.” She explains that since challenges like climate change require countries to act interdependently and collaboratively, those that continue to hold on to a “conventional perception of sovereignty and national interest as the maximizing of independence” are in fact likely see their policymaking sovereignty erode over time. Shying away from international cooperation will inevitably set these countries at odds with the rest of the international community, limiting the potential impact of any policy they hope to pursue. Kaul concludes that in an interdependent political environment like today’s, the “only path” is cooperation.

Second, national governments that prioritize their independence will weaken the inheritance we pass on to future generations. Already, all those under the age of 30—half of the world’s population—are being called the “packhorse generation,” because they are inheriting a burden of crises and responsibilities they neither caused nor deserve. And now, by failing to work together to protect global commons like outer space and the Earth’s atmosphere and to deliver critical global public goods like health care and environmental conservation, the international system stands to trap not just one, but several generations in the same cycle of intergenerational injustice.

Since countries are the fundamental building blocks of the international system, national leaders must be the first to overcome this tension between the conventional perceptions of sovereignty and the need for collaborative global governance. The latter is humanity’s only hope for protecting the planet for future generations.

The need to reinvent sovereignty for a new age is not a groundbreaking suggestion. Many have made similar arguments before. In 2017, for instance—in response to an uptick in North Korean missile testing and heightened concerns about the “borderless threat of terrorism”—then-German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel argued that “in international cooperation, no one loses sovereignty.” Mottos like former U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America first,” he added, “would only lead to more national confrontations and less prosperity.” Gabriel’s argument points to a growing consensus that countries must embrace a new understanding of sovereignty—one that is compatible with effective multilateralism.

National governments that prioritize their independence will weaken the inheritance we pass on to future generations.

More recently, Guterres reiterated this conviction in his 2021 “Our Common Agenda” report, which outlined long-term recommendations for the U.N. “The purpose of international cooperation in the twenty-first century,” he wrote, “is to achieve a set of vital common goals on which our welfare, and indeed survival, as a human race depend.” 

Guterres suggested that U.N. member states work together with relevant stakeholders to create a “new deal at the global level” that would pursue those goals through “enhanced multilateral governance of global commons and global public goods” that “benefit humanity as a whole and that cannot be managed by any one State or actor alone.”

To that end, Guterres put forward a number of bold proposals. For instance, he committed to setting up a high-level advisory board on global governance led by former heads of state, which would offer advice to the U.N. and evaluate proposed reforms. He even provided a number of ideas for this board to consider when it begins work, including institutional changes—like transforming the now obsolete Trusteeship Council into a body representing future generations—as well as more specific recommendations, like creating a new initiative, the Global Digital Compact, to connect all people to the internet and cement the digital commons as a global public good. Finally, Guterres called for a Summit of the Future in 2023, at which the international community could review and advance the recommendations coming out of the new high-level advisory board.

Some promising steps have been taken to turn Guterres’ ideas into reality. Most notably, on Feb. 10, the secretary-general made the exciting announcement that former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven had accepted his invitation to co-lead the high-level advisory board. This bodes well, since Sirleaf comes from a “future majority” country, meaning that more people will be born there by 2100 than are currently living there today, while Lofven comes from a “living majority” country, where the reverse is true. This will bring a vital balance to a board that aims to weigh in on intergenerational issues like global commons and global public goods.

Still, there is reason to be skeptical about such efforts. Though the co-leaders of the board were well-chosen, there has been little news about the composition of the remainder of the board. Since young people have a greater stake in the future, and since young activists spearheaded efforts to ensure that future generations were considered in “Our Common Agenda,” it will be disappointing if there are no young thinkers and activists on the board’s final membership list.

Moreover, Abdulla Shahid, the president of the U.N. General Assembly, is currently convening a series of consultations on “Our Common Agenda” that could either provide fuel to Guterres’ recommendations or stop them dead in their tracks. Shahid has made it clear that only those recommendations that “gather broad support among the membership” will be picked up by the General Assembly. That could dramatically slow down progress on recommendations related to global commons and global public goods, since these topics, which require bold, multilateral action, are often neglected in favor of more immediate, national priorities. Again, the tension between sovereignty and global cooperation is rearing its ugly head in a way that could be detrimental to future generations.

As Guterres wrote in his report, the world must now make a choice between “breakdown” and “breakthrough.” If we want to achieve the latter, then the international system needs to embrace a new understanding of sovereignty—one that that won’t prevent us from safeguarding and providing for the people of the future.

Aishwarya Machani is a U.N. Foundation Next Generation Fellow. She led a consultative process bringing together hundreds of young people from around the world to contribute to the U.N. secretary-general’s “Our Common Agenda” report. She also co-authored “Our Future Agenda,” an accompanying vision and plan for next and future generations. She recently graduated from the University of Cambridge. 

This article was originally published on World Politics Review.
Views in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect CGS policy.