Is it time for more cooperative capitalism?

The world is coming to New York this week to try to keep the world together. It’s a daunting challenge.

This year’s United Nations General Assembly — the 78th — begins Tuesday and has a mission to “rebuild trust and reignite global solidarity.” Lofty, indeed. And more frustrating for many than a Manhattan traffic jam.

More than most years, this year the UN must work with a low tide of global cooperation. Among its challenges: the hot war in Ukraine, the cold war with China, a mounting distrust of Big Tech and a spiraling climate crisis. And critically for the UN, a mounting skepticism over the #SustainableDevelopmentGoals and their 2030 deadline.

The #SDGs were set in 2017, and this assembly will be a chance to review their progress at the halfway mark. According to the UN, only 15% of the targets set by member nations are on course to be met. Roughly half the targets are well off course, and a third have actually made no progress or worsened.

#Climate is one key area where most of the world is drifting further and further from the targets set for 2030, but it’s far from the only concern. Safe drinking water, affordable housing and reliable energy are among the pressing issues that the UN believes need more focus if the world is to find peace, prosperity and progress.

We didn’t get here by accident. Following the global financial crisis, Great Recession, Arab Spring and rise of nationalism (and its close cousin, racism), the global community agreed last decade that a more holistic approach was needed — and one that would deliver material benefits to billions of people. It hasn’t happened, as the UN’s scorecard shows.

Clearly, trying harder won’t do it. We need fresh approaches. I came to see that more clearly this weekend judging a sustainability case competition at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. The #GlobalGoalsJam drew teams from five universities, to tackle several challenges, including equity, diversity and inclusion.

Some of the teams proposed quick fixes, which can be popular but often bring unintended costs and consequences — and also don’t get to the root causes. The more successful presentations considered systems design, and sought to engage broad networks of people and groups in developing new approaches. I told the students afterwards that the world may need a new form of “cooperative capitalism” to help companies work together, as well as compete, and for governments to join forces with the private sector in designing solutions. We also will need a greater spirit of innovation, and with it more tolerance of experimentation and failure. Not at any cost, of course. And not if it leads to harm. But if we’re to do all that we’ve signed up to do by 2030, we will need to take more chances.

There’s no better place to start that than New York — the epicentre of capitalism (Wall Street) and cooperation (the UN). If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. And everywhere. #sustainability