Students from all over the world attend the Global Public Policy Network conference.

Professor Kishore Mahbubani, Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, opened today’s Global Public Policy Network Conference in Singapore by emphasizing the borderless challenges that our world faces today. He equated our current global situation to a boat with no captain, where each country lives in a separate cabin and creates policies that take care of their cabin, not the boat. However, these shared challenges — climate change, disease, economic instability, poverty — require institutions, leadership, policies that promote collaboration and shared solutions.

Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, Secretary General of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), asked how to build and sustain institutions to deal with these emerging challenges and called for the young generation to start thinking and start adopting a “global awareness” that recognizes our shared responsibility for our world.

An overriding theme of the opening speakers was the need for both institutions and leaders to move beyond antiquated closed systems to recognize the shift in power from western leadership to world leadership. One of Dr. Pitsuwan’s key points was that 6 billion people are beginning to realize that they have a voice, but the institutions that represent these people are not empowering these citizens because of their own desire to keep institutions closed and limited.

After emphasizing the need for collaboration and people-centered policy, Dean Mahbubani asked if any of the GPPN participants believed that the leaders of world were going to say “we’re all in the same boat, let us come together, let us make major sacrifices to save this world because it’s the only world we have” in the upcoming Copenhagen conference. Frighteningly, no one raised their hand.

Originally posted on JaclynCarlsen.com.