A Single World Leader

Today we live in a world, where thanks to technological advancements in communication and digitization, countries have only geographical significance. Even problems such as Covid 19 pandemic with its variants like Delta and Omicron, climate change, terrorism, drug menace, human trafficking, etc., affect all nations.

  The fight against these scourges also tends to get global with nations coming together under the aegis of The United Nations (UN) through organs like  World Health Organisation(WHO),  the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC). Besides these,  other bodies like NATO, G20 summit, Conference of Parties 26 both held recently in Rome  Glasgow respectively also discuss ways and means of dealing with the problems.

 A fair assessment of the results of these global initiatives however points out that the problems still persist. The main reason for this is that though nations gather to find unanimity of approach, their respective national interests take a higher priority than the compulsion of implementing an agreed decision or solution. 

Take the Covid 19 pandemic for a case.  When the first and second waves of Covid were in full swing calling for vigorous vaccination drives, strict quarantine of victims,  area lockdowns, and travel restrictions,  many nations faced problems of insufficient quantities of vaccines, hospital beds, oxygen cylinders logistics difficulties, and demand outstripping supply,. Production of vaccines to meet the global needs at affordable costs is fraught with disputes over vaccine patent waivers. The WHO was crying hoarse to speed up vaccination of all adult population and enforce rigorous enforcement of Covid Appropriate Behaviour like masking the face, social distancing, and frequent handwashing. Individual nations or even areas within a nation decided these issues weighing the pros and cons of lockdowns vis-a-vis livelihood needs of the people. Then there was the problem of resistance to vaccination by some people. 

 The Paris Agreement as a legally binding international treaty on climate change has set a goal to limit global warming to a level below 2, preferably 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. This calls for all nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide which is the main pollutant from burning coal for power generation. Both China and India have resisted attempts for a G20 declaration on phasing out domestic coal consumption. Here the economy of using locally available coal for the generation of power overrides the global good of reduced pollution arising from power using non-fossil sources.  

 The question arises as to why global initiatives for dealing with global problems have not delivered the goods in spite of the existence of global organs like the UN and overall laudable efforts by leaders of various nations to find solutions. Is it the respective national economic, political,  social, governance, ideological interest overwhelming global good.?

 Can there be a leader(s) to lead other leaders? What will be that entity's source of authority to lead? Will a group of public intellectuals, activists, authors, statesmen, artists, academia be able and acceptable to provide unified global leadership to leaders of governments? The UNGA and UNSC are only assemblies of governments with some of them threatening to stop funding and with weapons like Veto power can and have indeed torpedoed many viable solutions for many problems in the past.