No More Top-Down Leadership.(International Edition; POINT OF VIEW)

Byline: Klaus Schwab; Schwab is founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum.

Many articles have been written in the past few weeks about the need to reform international-governance organizations like the United Nations, Bretton Woods and the G8. The general idea has been that if such organizations had worked better, the financial crisis would have been averted. While it is obvious that 21st-century economic and political challenges cannot be adequately handled by institutions set up for a post-WWII world, the proposals put forth so far are still too stuck in traditional thinking.

First, we need to realize that today's world is far more Asian and more African than the one that gave birth to these institutions. It is also a young world, with a median age of 28 years and new paradigms of virtual communication that reach across space and time. It is more complex, much more integrated, and bottom up rather than top down. And, above all, this new world is so interdependent that solutions for global problems require true global trusteeship. This means that the old ways of multilateral negotiation, which are based on defending national interests, are simply no longer adequate for addressing the problems of this rapidly changing world.

What we need now is an entirely new global-cooperation system that capitalizes on technology, diversity and trust.

First, we need to depoliticize international problems by creating a Global Agenda Council for each major world challenge (such as financial security, climate change and global governance). These councils would be made up of the experts around the world--scientists, economists, artists, academics, business leaders--who are most knowledgeable in each problem area. They would be selected by peer review, not on political considerations. The councils would interact regularly, give a continuous assessment of the situation and provide early warnings about emergencies that might be brewing (a coming plague or a likely area of financial meltdown), but also come up with longer-term solutions. They would not replace existing governance structures, but would support and advise them.

At the World Economic Forum, we have identified more than 50 key global challenges. Assuming that the ideal size of such a council is about 20 experts, the world could rely on a network of around 1,000 Global Agenda "trustees" to become a kind of brain trust for solving major international problems. The group would be highly integrated--for example, the global climate-change group would interact with groups in charge of water or ...