Opinion: 2024 must be the year we go back to the future

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to lift our gaze — albeit briefly — governments resolved to ‘build back better,’ citizens demanded more and better global cooperation, and young people, faced with the prospect of a stolen future, called for measures to safeguard future generations. In response, states agreed that 2024 would be a year of the future. There would be a Summit of the Future to adopt a “pact for the future” covering sustainable development — including efforts to accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals — and financing; peace and security; science, technology, and innovation and digital cooperation; youth and future generations; and transforming global governance. States also agreed to adopt a global digital compact and pandemic treaty, while efforts such as the Bridgetown Initiative, V20 Accra-Marrakech Agenda, and the Paris Pact for People and Planet have raised expectations on climate and development finance, as well as reform of the global financial architecture. Yet as 2023 draws to a close, the future has receded from the political limelight as the past has returned with a vengeance. Over 75 years in the making, the conflict in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories is a stark reminder of the dangers of crises unaddressed. But so too are the conflicts in Ukraine — next year marks a decade since Russia invaded Crimea — Sudan and many other places. These crises — and the grossly unequal responses to them — are hardening geopolitical fault lines and fuelling mistrust, which is already high after years of broken promises to lower-income countries on aid, climate, and vaccines. They are also impeding progress in more mundane ways: For instance, Russia is blocking agreement on a host for the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference. Already, some lower-income states are concerned that discussions on the future will detract from immediate priorities. The truth is we need leaders to focus on both. That means a large injection of cash at the International Development Association replenishment next year to get us on track to tripling finance by 2030, while putting policies in place to help leaders make the cash count. That means adopting the best-possible pandemic treaty while fighting health protectionism inside and outside the World Health Organization. That means urgent debt relief — next year low-income country debt payments are due to reach a 25-year high — as well as creating a new sovereign debt workout mechanism. The past has caught up with us. So-called future threats are already here — and the next is just one virus mutation, algorithm, or conflict away. We must get back to the future in 2024. --— That means moving forward with the interim loss and damage arrangements at the World Bank, alongside efforts to harmonize climate finance mechanisms which Brazil and Italy will take up during their respective presidencies of the G20 (to be G21 with the inclusion of the African Union) and G7. And it means recognizing the SDGs will not be sustainable or transformative unless we prepare for what lies ahead. Instead of debating which forums or agendas have primacy, we need a clear through line and drum beat from the meetings that matter to our future — climate, development, finance, health — to the Summit of the Future itself. With elections due in seven major G21 member countries — including the United States, India, and South Africa — countries such as Brazil will need to step up. As 2024 G21 president, United Nations Security Council member, and 2025 COP 30 host, Brazil can play an outsized role in shepherding humanity’s future: from finding ways to tackle the climate-conflict nexus to addressing the increasingly global impacts of regional wars and using its much-vaunted neutrality to navigate Russia’s G20 participation and the impacts the U.S. election may have on the Rio summit. Meanwhile, African states can use the African Union’s newly minted G20 membership to make debt a priority. And Barbados, 2024 chair of the Vulnerable Twenty Group, can bring together climate and development priorities, and champion reform agendas for both lower- and middle-income economies. At the 2024 Summit of the Future, states should take inspiration from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights when crafting the pact for the future. The declaration’s values have stood the test of time, serving as building blocks that adapt to new challenges, in a way the U.N.’s structures have not. In addition, they should use the opportunity to advance the oft-stated goal of integrating partners into the system while holding them to account. This is long overdue in the tech realm, where social media is already upending reality and artificial intelligence is poised to alter it completely but where the big players from the private sector are too often missing from discussions. It is also overdue on the 2030 Agenda, which is still not the whole-of-society project we need it to be. States should reimagine their approach and call for the next phase of the goals to be a massive capacity-building drive that sees the U.N. hand over tasks and resources to partners on the ground, leaving it to focus on areas where it can add value, such as data, foresight, and norm-setting. Finally, states should use the summit to raise tough questions, like what statehood will mean when rising sea levels result in entire countries disappearing. This does not mean turning the pact into a laundry list, but simply recognizing that we cannot ignore these issues for much longer. The past has caught up with us. So-called future threats are already here — and the next is just one virus mutation, algorithm, or conflict away. We must get back to the future in 2024. The summit is not an end in itself, but it must move forward with this conversation.