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Reform or reimagine? This is the question being asked in 2025, the year the UN has turned 80. This was very much on my mind again, when I participated in a panel on the sidelines of the Second World Summit for Social Development. We were discussing Eco-Social Contracts for Sustainable and Just Futures, a brilliant new book that argues for radically new frameworks to “tackle the polycrisis and drive regenerative transitions.” Co-edited by Atlantic Fellow Najma Mohamed and featuring a chapter by the Atlantic Institute Executive Director, Lysa John, the book makes an urgent case for bringing together people, the planet, and the institutions meant to serve both. Listening to my fellow panelists, I was continually drawn back to the book’s fundamental premise: the urgent need to forge new eco-social contracts that intentionally harmonize the fate of the people and the planet. It boiled down to one question. Can we really reimagine our future? The honest and hopeful answer is yes—and the window to do this is open now.
We’re still living with a global system largely designed in 1945. It worked for a time and then hardened into habit. Meanwhile, the world has fundamentally changed. Climate risks have accelerated; digital platforms and AI now shape speech, markets, and power with little accountability. Inequality has deepened, and authoritarianism is making a return. The unfinished work of decolonization keeps surfacing in who gets heard and who decides. Incremental adjustments can only sustain this outdated blueprint for so long. At a certain threshold, the problem is not a bug in the code, but the code itself. What is required is not modification, but a comprehensive redesign: a global governance model that is inherently more equitable, representative, and responsive to the diverse realities of every region, community and people, not just the few. A new system must include the voices of all communities, especially those who have been left out/behind.
This call for an equitable reimagination is not new, but the current moment is uniquely decisive due to the unprecedented convergence of simultaneous reform tracks. Inside the UN, the UN80 agenda is rewiring how the house runs, aligning peace and security with development and human rights, reviewing mandates, and bringing technology and data into a rights-based frame. The Pact For The Future and Global Digital Compact
set commitments for governing tech and AI with accountability and inclusion. Negotiations toward a UN Tax Convention are asking who writes the rules of the global economy. And the Financing for Development (FfD4) process is pushing financing into the present tense: debt workouts that work, liquidity that arrives on time, and multilateral financial institutions judged by impact as much as balance sheets.
Beyond the UN's core, the political momentum for change is even bolder. The Bridgetown Initiative names what many have tiptoed around: the financial system protects wealth more reliably than it protects people or the planet. The G20 debate on multilateral development banks sounds technical, but it decides whose future is investable. From Accra and other capitals, regional agendas are insisting that representation without real power is theatre. While formal input mechanisms may vary, the call for fresh thinking is open across the board.
For changemakers, this is an opportunity to contribute new ideas as well as turn complex negotiations into clear briefings for communities and decision-makers. We can bring evidence and lived experience together, lifting models and methods that already work, especially those led by affected communities. Building coalitions across regions and disciplines and platforming radical and Indigenous interventions can help us create this new system that equitably redistributes power, resources and responsibility.
Reimagining of our collective futures is already underway. The operating system of international cooperation is being rewritten. And if we show up with clarity, courage, and workable designs, we can help build a system less beholden to the past and fairer to those who’ve so far been neglected.
Here are some recent initiatives to watch:
Coalition for the UN We Need (C4UN)
Commission on Development Cooperation - Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
The Great Reset - World Economic Forum
The Campaign for Global Public Investment
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