In European capitals of multilateralism — Geneva, Brussels, Vienna — a new season is dawning. The illusion that we could just “hang on for another four years,” after which everything would return to normal, has faded. In its place, a new realization is slowly taking shape: the values, beliefs, norms, funding flows, and rules that form the international development system are tipping in real time.
The late Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine had a name for these moments: bifurcation points. His experiments with complex systems demonstrated that once a system reaches a bifurcation point — the critical tipping point when transformation happens — it becomes too unstable and cannot maintain its previous structure.
If that sounds too abstract, here’s a simpler way to put it: we are standing at a fork in the road. Starkly different futures lie ahead for the international development system — some more probable than others.
About the authors
Carlos Alvarez Pereira
Carlos Alvarez Pereira is the secretary-general of The Club of Rome, where he promotes systemic sense-making to inspire responsible decisions toward equitable well-being on a healthy planet. An aerospace engineer, he has had academic, entrepreneurial, and management positions in international contexts and is a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, or WAAS.
Katherine Milligan
Katherine Milligan is a visiting lecturer at the Graduate Institute of Geneva and a strategic adviser to foundations, social enterprises, and international organizations. A recognized thought leader in social innovation and systems change, she served as the executive director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship at WEF and co-authored the #1 article in Stanford Social Innovation Review in 2022 and 2024.
