Mini Trip Report: United Nations, New York September 11-13, 2019 and World Bank, Washington, DC September 16-17

The common theme for the two meeting was:  Investments for Economic Transformation for common wellbeing. 

World Academy of Art and Science and Conscious Capital invited me and 49 others from around the world to an intensive 2.5-day meeting at the UN under the sponsorship of the UN Partnerships Office and UNCTAD. The purpose of the meeting was to explore how to create the next economic system to more seriously address SDGs, global challenges, and improve the human condition more efficiently than the current systems. The beginnings of a virtual organization was formed with initial roles and responsibilities to be coordinated on a collaborative platform. I will draw key insights, models, and strategies from that platform into the situation sections of Global Challenges 1 and 7 in the Global Futures Intelligence System (GFIS) for feedback, and feed external resources/activities cited in GFIS like Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room in their platform.

Much of the focus of the UN/NY meeting was on changing investment incentives and systems in part by linking with the international sustainable development community rather than focusing on redistribution. More time was spent on capital flow than on accumulation, and economic transformation for common wellbeing. A summit at the UN or Pre-con is in planning for 2020 for about 600 people. In the meantime a platform was created to keep people in contact to further the agenda. Questions that came more than once: How to improve the percent of global investments that go into improving the human condition? How to reduce marketing with the sole purpose of the manipulation of people for profit?

The meeting then moved on to the World Bank in Washington, D.C. September 16-17. There was a general consensus that the time has come to initiate a global community movement to better connect more enlightened consciousness or conscience with capital (not just financial capital, but other forms of human capital) to transform economies that are good for all life. Discussions focused on how investments can make the “world work for all” (in the words of the futurists Bucky Fuller). Imagine each country’s SDG committees and top investment managers making an investment fund? Largest 35 asset managers are to be brought together to help investment roles in systems change for SDGs

A sampling of some interesting comments during the meeting

• It is estimated that it will take $5 Trillion to achieve the SDGs by 2030.
• 50% of natural resources are locked up in futures contracts via China
• Connect your values and investment
• A lot of money is being transferred to women and millennials who may invest differently
• Create an alternative to the game to Monopoly for synergetic success
• People do care, but they don’t know what to do. How do we bring care alive in financial systems?
• The answers and actors are there but not the common platform (or there are so many platforms that keeps the potential of coherent action fragmented).
• Not just new ideas, we need new eyes to see reality differently.
• Neither right or left; we are ahead.