Session III - Washington D.C.

The third session of the Global Governance 2020 program took place from the 16-20 January 2011, in Washington, DC organized by the Global Public Policy Institute and the Brookings Institution, which hosted the session, in collaboration with the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, the Hertie School of Governance, Fudan University, and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. The program was launched with funding from the Robert Bosch Foundation and Transatlantic Program of the German Government (ERP Grant administered by the German Ministry for Economics and Technology).

In Washington, DC the twenty-four GG2020 fellows from China, Germany and the United States finalized their scenarios on the future of global governance in the areas of climate change, nuclear non-proliferation and global economic governance, which they developed during and in-between the Shanghai and Berlin sessions. After completing the actor-specific interpretation for their scenarios, the fellows concentrated on finalizing the policy implications and recommendations for their working group reports. During this session, the fellows met with leading academics and practitioners across the city to test and exchange their ideas which they developed over the course of the GG2020 program.

Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott and warmly welcomed all the fellows to Washington, DC. In a roundtable discussion, Talbott shared his views on some of the most pressing challenges facing the international community in the 21st century and discussed some of the findings presented by the GG2020 working groups. The discussion also revisited Talbottt’s article titled The Birth of the Global Nation, published in Time Magazine in 1992.

Throughout the third session, the fellows met with leading experts across Washington, DC on a daily basis for an exchange of ideas which helped their work as well as inform their counterparts: first, by providing experts and policymakers with thought provoking impulses for their respective fields of interest; and second, by providing the fellows with valuable feedback that helped improve their final written outputs.  After every expert meeting the fellows reconvened in their working groups and discussed the main takeaways from the days discussions.

On 19 January, the GG2020 working group on climate governance presented their report titled Beyond a Global Deal – A UN+ Approach to Climate Governance at Brookings Institution. The group shared their findings and recommendations with a panel of climate policy experts and an audience of representatives from government, NGOs, think tanks, academia and the media. The working group laid out their vision and recommendations for the future of global climate governance. They proposed a climate governance framework that utilizes bottom-up approaches to produce effective and workable solutions for climate protection in the absence of a global deal.

The GG2020 fellows recommend that:

• The United States and China actively support an entrepreneurial “bottom-up” approach that encourages emissions reductions by cities, regions, companies and organizations.
• The private sector and civil society focus on building cross-national partnerships to lead where governments cannot, adopting voluntary emissions-targets at the firm, sector and industry levels.
• The EU shape a “coalition of the ambitious” of countries committed to aggressive emissions reductions, while using both diplomatic and economic incentives to promote participation by other countries and non-state actors.
• The UNFCCC expand beyond its state-centric and consensus-based structure to one which explicitly encourages and actively supports a wider variety of approaches to climate governance.
  

After the presentation, the panelists responded to the GG2020 fellows' proposed framework. The panelists included Adele Morris (policy director for Climate and Energy Economics at Brookings), Jennifer Morgan (director of the Energy and Climate Program at the World Resources Institute), Jennifer Turner (director of the China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars) and Stephen Hammer (director of the Urban Energy Project at Columbia University). After the panel responded, the fellows and experts had a fruitful discussion with the audience.

The GG2020 program aims to give the fellows the opportunity to test their ideas through in-depth discussions with leading policy makers and experts. During the GG2020 Washington, DC session the fellows spoke with a number of global governance experts and government representatives, among them Anne-Marie Slaughter ( former director of policy planning at the US State Department), Strobe Talbott (the president of Brookings), Andrew Steer (special envoy for climate change at the World Bank), Klaus Scharioth (Germany’s ambassador to the US), Jeffrey Lewis (director of economic policy and debt in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network), Matthew Burrows (counselor at the US National Intelligence Council) and Olivier Blanchard (economic counselor and director of the research department at the International Monetary Fund).

As in every GG2020 session, an important aspect of the program is the cultural activities that provide the fellows with the opportunity to deepen their understanding of the history, culture and society of the respective host city and country. During the Washington, DC session the fellows had the opportunity to visit Capital Hill and the White House area. The fellows also explored a number of other neighborhoods during the evenings and mingled with the locals while watching America’s biggest sporting event, the National Football League finals. The evening’s highlights included dinners in different neighborhoods across Washington, DC and cuisines from across the world showcasing the diversity of the US.