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multilateralism
Why the UN Environment Assembly Is Essential to a Safer, More Resilient Planet
Inaction now carries a clearer cost than ever: At UNEA-7 in Nairobi—the environmental capital of the world—the “Nairobi Spirit” can convert shared challenges into shared action.
Dec 07, 2025
As geopolitical challenges and tensions escalate globally, one thing is clear: Fragmented politics will not fix a fractured planet.
This is why the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA)—the world’s highest decision-making body on the environment—is so critical to address our shared and emerging environmental threats.
The seventh session of the assembly, taking place at the headquarters of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, Kenya this month, will bring together ministers, intergovernmental organizations, multilateral environmental agreements, the broader UN system, civil society groups, scientists, activists, and the private sector to shape global environmental policy.
Recent UNEP data show emissions continue to rise as the impacts of global environment and climate challenges are accelerating and growing ever more extreme. We see it in record heatwaves; disappearing ecosystems; and toxins in our air, water, and soil. These are global threats that demand global solutions.
To deliver at the speed and scale required, the United Nations system must act together—with the full family of Multilateral Environmental Agreements coming together to support countries.
Even in turbulent times, environmental multilateralism continues to deliver. Since countries met at UNEA last year, this multilateralism has delivered important progress.
Governments agreed to establish the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste, and Pollution—finally completing the “trifecta” of science bodies alongside the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The BBNJ Agreement on the sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction came into force, a major win for the governance of our oceans.
Importantly, during such a challenging political climate, the Paris Agreement is showing that it is working. However, it is clear we need to move much faster with greater determination. But change is afoot: The global shift to low-emission and climate-resilient development is irreversible. Renewable energy is outcompeting fossil fuels pricewise. Climate smart investments are driving tomorrow’s vibrant economies and societies.
While we must recognize that many were hoping COP30 would include explicit reference to phasing out fossil fuels in the decision text, this was not to be. However, the COP president committed to creating two road maps during his one-year tenure, one to halt and reverse deforestation and another to transition away from fossil fuels—a move that was backed by more than 80 countries during the talks.
These are not small steps—nor are they enough to address the threats we face in full. But they do reinforce that multilateralism can still bring science and policy together to address our global challenges.
Of course, progress is not always straight forward. Since UNEA’s historic resolution in 2022 on a legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution, including in the marine environment, negotiations have continued to advance. While we do not yet have a full treaty text agreed, the latest talks in Geneva earlier this year made hard fought progress and countries remain at the table, sustaining momentum toward an agreement that ends plastic pollution once and for all.
This year, under the theme “Advancing sustainable solutions for a resilient planet,” UNEA will build on these wins to set the stage for even greater progress.
The seventh edition of UNEP’s flagship report, the Global Environmental Outlook, will be key to informing how we deliver this future. Released during UNEA, the report will help move us beyond diagnoses of our common challenges to identifying real solutions across five interconnected areas: economics and finance; circularity and waste; environment; energy; and food systems. Drawing on contributions from hundreds of experts worldwide, the Outlook will help countries prioritize the most effective solutions to deliver our global goals.
To deliver at the speed and scale required, the United Nations system must act together—with the full family of Multilateral Environmental Agreements coming together to support countries. UNEP is proud to host 17 conventions and panels that span the environmental spectrum, from toxic chemicals to protection of the ozone layer. Bringing this family of agreements closer together offers opportunities to better align priorities.
This is why UNEA will put a central focus on how these agreements can better work together for accelerated, more targeted support to countries as they implement commitments. Because action on climate is action on biodiversity and land; because action on land is action on climate; because action on chemicals, pollution, and waste is action on nature and on climate.
Inaction now carries a clearer cost than ever. At UNEA-7 in Nairobi—the environmental capital of the world—the “Nairobi Spirit” can convert shared challenges into shared action and, ultimately, shared prosperity on a safe, resilient planet that benefits all.
The United Nations Environment Assembly will take place from December 8-12 in Nairobi, Kenya.
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The G20 Is a Failure, But Can It Do Better to Correct Past Mistakes?
World leaders heading to the G20 summit should use this rare multilateral space to advance a more equitable and sustainable global economy. Will they?
Nov 15, 2025
Multilateralism is in tatters. Instead of rules-based, consensus agreements, global economic relations have largely devolved into one-on-one arm-twisting and name-calling, alternating with fawning sycophancy and lavish personal gifts. In recent negotiations with Asian leaders, President Trump scored a gold golf ball, a gold crown, and a gold-flecked dessert.
In a world already divided by extreme inequalities, the collapse of multilateralism makes it even more likely that the most powerful players — the largest economies and the wealthiest corporations and individuals — will score the best deals. Small countries and ordinary people, from Iowa soybean farmers and Mexican factory workers to digital service consumers in Cambodia, are even more likely to get the shaft.
The G20 is a space that was intended to catalyze multilateral action. In fact, it touts itself as the “the premier forum for international economic cooperation,” and it is the one place where leaders of the world’s largest economies sit down together at least once a year for face-to-face dialogue.
South Africa will host this year’s G20 summit from November 22 to 23, and the United States will host the next one in December 2026. Do we have any reason to think this forum holds potential for not only restoring multilateralism but also advancing a more equitable global economy?
This is a question I’ve grappled with over the past several months as part of a team of analysts from the UK, Brazil, South Africa, and other countries. In our new joint report, The G20 at a Crossroads, we document a few examples of decisive actions this body has taken during its nearly two decades of existence.
In the midst of the financial crisis that erupted in 2008, for instance, labor unions and others successfully lobbied G20 leaders to adopt coordinated stimulus measures that helped avoid a depression-level global collapse.
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the G20 approved of at least some debt relief for low-income countries and authorized $650 billion in financial aid in the form of “special drawing rights,” the largest-ever allocation of this IMF-created international reserve asset.
These actions were far from perfect. Governments prematurely aborted the stimulus programs they adopted after the 2008 crash in favor of austerity budgets that deepened and prolonged economic crises.
Pandemic support programs were woefully insufficient for the poorest countries and failed to prevent many of them from sinking even further into debt. Between 2019 and 2023, Sub-Saharan Africa’s total external debts increased from $747 billion to $864 billion while the number of global billionaires grew from 2,153 to 2,640. Overall, 3.4 billion of the world’s people live in countries that spent more money in the years 2021-2023 servicing their foreign debts than on public education or health.
What can we learn from these examples? G20 leaders obviously have the power to mobilize vast resources, but the few times they’ve used this power, the focus has largely been on containing market crises to protect the interests of the wealthiest creditors and investors rather than improving the lives of the most vulnerable.
And so while we need to push for renewed multilateralism, we cannot be satisfied with a return to old models. We need new approaches that go beyond crisis management to build a more resilient, sustainable, and just global economy for the long term.
To achieve this, the G20 must tackle what we describe in our report as the “lived crises of our time” — the daily realities of extreme droughts, food insecurity, unaffordable housing, precarious work, debt traps, and forced displacement.
Decades of neglecting these threats to global stability has undercut the welfare of people in both the Global North and South. High levels of poverty and unemployment in the developing world, for example, weaken the bargaining power of U.S. workers who are competing in a global labor pool.
Climate change, obviously, knows no boundaries. And skyrocketing inequality is fueling political polarization, authoritarianism, and xenophobia around the world, as elites deflect blame onto migrants and other convenient scapegoats instead of confronting structural failures.
Last year, the Brazilian presidency took important steps towards broadening the G20 agenda. Through diplomacy, sustained civil society engagement, and collaboration with innovative academics, they elevated critical proposals for clean energy financing, taxing extreme wealth, and valuing care work. And while they did not secure G20-wide cooperation on these fronts, their efforts gave a boost to campaigns in numerous countries for increasing taxes on billionaires and ensuring decent pay for caregivers and affordable care for those who need it.
“Wherever we live, we all want the same things — a secure place to live, a healthy environment, the ability to care for our loved ones, and the chance to plan for our future,” notes our lead report author, Fernanda Balata, of the New Economics Foundation.
With political will and a commitment to cooperation, G20 leaders have the power to deliver these basic elements of a dignified life to billions of people.
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Six Months Into His Presidency, Trump Has Created a Global Humanitarian Catastrophe
The question now facing other world leaders is stark: will they continue to capitulate to Trump’s unilateralism, or will they stand up and defend multilateralism and international solidarity?
Jul 18, 2025
As the UN’s independent expert on poverty, I am no stranger to harrowing statistics. But few numbers have shaken me like those emerging in the wake of the Trump administration’s suspension of U.S. foreign aid. According to new estimates published in The Lancet, these funding cuts could result in more than 14 million deaths by 2030, a third of them young children.
These deaths will not be the result of droughts, earthquakes, pandemics, or war. They will be the direct consequence of a single, lethal decision made by one of the wealthiest men to ever walk this planet.
On his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump handed a death sentence to millions of people. Hours after taking office on January 20, 2025, he signed Executive Order 14169, ordering a pause on billions of dollars of foreign aid under the guise of a “90-day review” to ensure aid was aligned with his “America First” approach.
Six months later, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been dissolved, and the entirety of America’s global humanitarian aid workforce will be terminated over the summer. The findings of the “review” have not been published.
What was billed as a temporary policy reassessment has transformed over the first half of 2025 into a full-blown humanitarian emergency.
Until the U.S. State Department releases a full assessment report, one can only conclude that the decisions to suspend foreign aid and subsequently dismantle USAID were made in an environment of zero transparency, zero accountability, and with no clear justification for a decision that will ultimately cost millions of lives.
What was billed as a temporary policy reassessment has transformed over the first half of 2025 into a full-blown humanitarian emergency. Estimates put the death toll since the aid freeze was announced at nearly 350,000 people—more than 200,000 of them children. All of these deaths were entirely preventable.
USAID and additional cuts to the UN and its agencies mean the UN faces the gravest threat to its existence in its 80-year history. UNFPA, the UN's reproductive health agency, estimates 32 million people will lose access to its services. UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, warns that 12.8 million displaced people are at risk of losing life-saving health interventions. The International Organization for Migration projects 10 million migrants and internally displaced people will miss out on emergency assistance.
The retreat may feel politically convenient, but the consequences will not stay confined to distant borders.
We are numbed by numbers. “One death is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic,” the saying goes. But these are our fellow humans—right now—suffering and dying. Children refused food. Refugees denied life-saving care after fleeing the horrors of war. Mothers bleeding to death during childbirth. All because the United States, once the backbone of the global humanitarian system, has suddenly turned off the tap.
America has abandoned the fight against poverty. But what does it mean to put America first while letting children elsewhere starve to death? The retreat may feel politically convenient, but the consequences will not stay confined to distant borders. When food systems collapse, migration spikes. When vaccines are cut off, disease spreads. When aid disappears, conflict grows. There is no version of global instability in which the U.S. remains unscathed.
No other country is stepping in to fill the void left by the United States. On the contrary, many are following suit, redirecting money once earmarked for life-saving development programmes—initiatives that ultimately build a safer, more stable world–towards defense spending.
These decisions are not just budgetary shifts; they represent a fundamental threat to multilateralism and the international rules-based order that has kept the world from the brink of world war for well over half a century.
The question now facing other world leaders is stark: will they continue to capitulate to Trump’s unilateralism, or will they stand up and defend multilateralism and international solidarity, including financial support, as our only safeguard against chaos, endless conflict, and unnecessary human suffering?
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