Welcome to the United Nations
Our humanity and our planet exist in a time of great challenges. Billions of our fellow human beings still live in great poverty - and are thus denied a decent life. The inequalities in living conditions, wealth and power are enormous. Oppression of women, corruption and lack of democracy remain major challenges. Global health risks, increasingly frequent and intense natural disasters, violent extremism, terrorism and the associated humanitarian crises and forced displacements of people do threaten to reverse much of the developments of recent decades. The depletion of natural resources and the negative effects of environmental degradation, including desertification, deforestation, drought, soil degradation, marine pollution, freshwater scarcity and loss of biodiversity, contribute to and exacerbate the list of challenges facing humanity. The negative consequences of climate change undermine the ability of all countries to achieve sustainable development. Rising global temperatures and
subsequent sea level rises are seriously affecting coastal countries, including many of the least developed countries and small island nations. Many societies' survival and the planet's biological support system are in danger.
However, we also live in a time of great opportunity. In the last generation, hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of extreme poverty. Access to education has increased sharply for both boys and girls. The proliferation of information and communication technologies and global interconnection has great potential to accelerate human progress, to bridge the digital divide and to develop knowledge societies, as well as scientific and technological innovation in areas as diverse as medicine and energy.
Every year, the World Economic Forum publishes its major report Global Risks. The latest report is accompanied by an analysis of the human costs of the Covid-19 pandemic. About 500 million people have been affected by poverty. Many of the world's students have had to cancel their studies. World trade as well as economic growth has declined. People's opportunities for employment and livelihoods have been severely hampered by the global virus pandemic. And a 1 per cent increase in unemployment means a 2 per cent increase in morbidity in chronic diseases. The pandemic is endangering the livelihoods and well-being of hundreds of millions of people.
However, in 2015 all 193 United Nations´ Member States adopted a world-historic "Agenda 2030", with 17 global goals for economically, socially and environmentally sustainable development, and 169 sub-goals. It aims to eradicate poverty and hunger, realize human rights for all, achieve equality and empowerment for all women and girls, and ensure lasting protection for the planet and its natural resources. The global goals are integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, the social, and the environmental.
However, an old Chinese proverb says that "words do not cook rice". In our opinion, Agenda 2030 requires decision-makers at all levels to strengthen their ability to think critically (i.e. not just go by their gut feeling), think ethically (i.e. not just in dollars and cents), think in systems (i.e. do not "take on one hell at a time") and think in long-term sustainability terms (i.e. not just for the next term of office).
We have for a long time argued in various contexts that these four abilities should be integrated into all higher education. The ability to think ethically can no longer be reserved for philosophy students alone, the ability to think in terms of long-term sustainability can no longer be limited to those who study environmental issues, and so on. Today's students are tomorrow's decision-makers, both in Sweden, in Europe, and globally. We now have support for this from several international university federations, including the International Association of Universities (IAU).
But, as we have already pointed out, the step from recommendations to effective and coordinated implementation is often very long. And this step is far from straightforward. The downspout thinking and the inability to think self-critically is institutionalized in many political systems. For example, our Swedish government is organized into 12 ministries, with 23 cabinet ministers, each with clearly defined areas of responsibility. The Prime Minister's Office, which could have had the task of integrating when the challenges are complex, is mainly concerned with balancing the interests of the political parties active in the government base, rather than those of the various policy areas. Each ministry's area of responsibility includes several government authorities that must apply the laws and carry out the activities that the Swedish Parliament and the government have decided on. There are 341 authorities under the government. Each is governed by its ministry through annually issued regulation letters. Our country is further divided into 21 regions and 290 municipalities. Sweden is certainly not unique in this fragmentation of government institutions that hampers policymaking and implementation.
That we have an urgent need to break with the downspout policy and that we must exercise the system's capacity for critical thinking has now been illustrated with brutal clarity by the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Thinking in dollars and cents instead of ethically has proven to have serious effects on the financing and organization of our elderly care. In Sweden we have seen a catastrophic lack of coordination in handling the effects of the pandemic between the various state authorities, regions and municipalities that has been recently been revealed by a public commission (the so called Corona-commission).
Higher education must now take its responsibility to break in the education of the decision-makers of the future with tendencies towards adaptability instead of critical thinking, group loyalty instead of responsibility, short-sightedness and destructive economics instead of a perspective based on a well-thought-out ethics. This will require a very comprehensive and long-term educational effort in higher education.
The question we ask is whether today's university and college managements are ready for such a responsibility. A responsibility that actually means that the next generation of decision-makers learns to think critically-ethically and in systems, and with a focus on the well-being and survival of humanity and our planet. With a new way of thinking that characterizes curricula and course content, taking into account a unanimous UN recommendation.
by Lennart Levi, MD, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Psychosocial Medicine, Karolinska institutet, Stockholm, Sweden & Bo Rothstein, PhD, Professor of Political science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.