1 00:00:12,141 --> 00:00:14,175 Give me 30 seconds, 2 00:00:15,875 --> 00:00:19,842 and I can give you a list of 30 terrifying challenges 3 00:00:20,093 --> 00:00:23,768 facing humanity and the planet at this point in history. 4 00:00:25,091 --> 00:00:27,416 And we wouldn't sleep tonight. 5 00:00:29,175 --> 00:00:31,924 There are so many of them, and they seem so frightening; 6 00:00:31,924 --> 00:00:34,122 it's not really surprising 7 00:00:34,122 --> 00:00:36,946 that many of us are feeling a little bit disheartened 8 00:00:37,480 --> 00:00:39,674 and a little bit anxious at the moment. 9 00:00:39,674 --> 00:00:41,567 But the way I see it, 10 00:00:41,567 --> 00:00:43,570 there are really only two things 11 00:00:43,570 --> 00:00:46,161 stopping the world working at the moment. 12 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:51,788 The first one is the fact that countries don't collaborate enough. 13 00:00:52,837 --> 00:00:55,755 We know the solutions to most of those challenges, 14 00:00:56,151 --> 00:00:59,263 but we don't implement them because we don't work together. 15 00:00:59,901 --> 00:01:03,013 And the second thing that's stopping the world working properly 16 00:01:03,013 --> 00:01:06,058 is the fact that every single one of those challenges 17 00:01:06,058 --> 00:01:09,549 has been caused by the behaviour of human beings. 18 00:01:10,089 --> 00:01:13,769 And if we can change that, we can change everything. 19 00:01:14,394 --> 00:01:18,403 Now, those sound like very big tasks, and they are, 20 00:01:18,813 --> 00:01:20,184 but I'm optimistic. 21 00:01:21,212 --> 00:01:27,061 For the last 10 years, I've been working on projects and plans and policies 22 00:01:27,491 --> 00:01:31,755 to try and attack those two barriers to making the world work better. 23 00:01:32,396 --> 00:01:36,080 Some of them, I try to encourage countries to implement, 24 00:01:36,560 --> 00:01:41,624 but the coolest ones, I keep, and I try to do them myself. 25 00:01:42,992 --> 00:01:48,115 So I'd like to tell you about two of those in the few minutes that I've got today. 26 00:01:49,511 --> 00:01:51,314 The first one is more of an update. 27 00:01:51,618 --> 00:01:53,867 It's a project called the Good Country Index, 28 00:01:53,867 --> 00:01:56,305 which I launched back in 2014. 29 00:01:56,626 --> 00:01:58,499 I haven't spoken about it for a while, 30 00:01:58,499 --> 00:02:01,677 but it's been through four different editions, 31 00:02:01,892 --> 00:02:04,411 and I thought it would be good to give an update. 32 00:02:04,961 --> 00:02:07,176 So the Good Country Index is an attempt 33 00:02:07,176 --> 00:02:11,356 to measure what every country on earth gives to the rest of the world 34 00:02:11,356 --> 00:02:13,358 outside of its own borders - 35 00:02:13,358 --> 00:02:16,064 a kind of balance sheet for the world, if you like. 36 00:02:16,593 --> 00:02:18,705 A lot of people when I originally launched it 37 00:02:18,705 --> 00:02:22,257 said, "Not another country index. There're enough of those around already." 38 00:02:22,257 --> 00:02:26,603 But the interesting thing is that almost all of the others look inwards. 39 00:02:26,603 --> 00:02:29,513 They treat countries as if they were little islands 40 00:02:29,513 --> 00:02:32,095 inhabiting their own private oceans. 41 00:02:32,095 --> 00:02:34,762 But surely that doesn't really make sense. 42 00:02:34,762 --> 00:02:39,647 Because everything everybody does has an impact on all of us, always. 43 00:02:39,927 --> 00:02:42,296 If one country pollutes the air or the water, 44 00:02:42,296 --> 00:02:44,666 that's our air and our water. 45 00:02:45,102 --> 00:02:46,924 If they go to war, 46 00:02:46,924 --> 00:02:50,631 it drags other countries in and the refugees pour out. 47 00:02:51,926 --> 00:02:53,938 There's really nothing you can do anymore 48 00:02:53,938 --> 00:02:56,718 that only impacts the domestic population. 49 00:02:56,718 --> 00:02:59,351 So what the Good Country Index attempts to do 50 00:02:59,351 --> 00:03:02,769 is to make a start towards helping people to understand 51 00:03:02,769 --> 00:03:05,464 that this is an interconnected system, 52 00:03:05,464 --> 00:03:09,240 by measuring what each country contributes to the rest of the world. 53 00:03:10,410 --> 00:03:14,927 Now, it's not my opinion which countries rank higher and which ones rank lower; 54 00:03:15,330 --> 00:03:19,293 it's formed from a set of 35 large databases 55 00:03:19,293 --> 00:03:21,940 which mostly come from the UN system, 56 00:03:21,940 --> 00:03:23,714 and what they do is they measure 57 00:03:23,714 --> 00:03:26,639 the positive and negative effects that countries have. 58 00:03:27,205 --> 00:03:30,291 It's always been a tiny bit controversial. 59 00:03:30,291 --> 00:03:31,714 But that's kind of good 60 00:03:31,714 --> 00:03:34,864 because it helps to start a new kind of argument. 61 00:03:35,709 --> 00:03:38,191 In fact, it works really well. 62 00:03:38,191 --> 00:03:42,219 Within hours of me releasing the first edition of the Good Country Index, 63 00:03:42,219 --> 00:03:46,232 I started receiving thousands and thousands of beautiful hate mails 64 00:03:46,232 --> 00:03:48,446 from trolls all over the world, 65 00:03:48,446 --> 00:03:52,547 demanding to know why the country they hate ranks so high, 66 00:03:52,547 --> 00:03:55,222 and the country they love ranks so low, 67 00:03:55,222 --> 00:03:57,512 and how I cooked up the entire thing 68 00:03:57,512 --> 00:04:01,342 just to produce that specific result and annoy them personally. 69 00:04:01,342 --> 00:04:02,842 (Laughter) 70 00:04:02,858 --> 00:04:06,093 So we have conversations about these things and we'd argue about it, 71 00:04:06,093 --> 00:04:10,413 and at the end I'd always say the same thing, "Look, it's working." 72 00:04:10,615 --> 00:04:12,713 I don't know if I'm right or if you're right, 73 00:04:12,713 --> 00:04:15,343 but in the end, we are discussing the right thing: 74 00:04:15,343 --> 00:04:18,795 we are talking about not how well is your country doing, 75 00:04:18,795 --> 00:04:21,136 but how much is your country doing. 76 00:04:21,506 --> 00:04:23,870 And that's what it was supposed to achieve. 77 00:04:24,043 --> 00:04:28,695 So by pushing the direction of the argument, the conversation, 78 00:04:28,695 --> 00:04:31,039 towards a new way of looking at countries, 79 00:04:31,039 --> 00:04:33,390 then I think that it's pushing the agenda forward. 80 00:04:33,827 --> 00:04:35,928 So, my colleague Robert Govers and I 81 00:04:35,928 --> 00:04:39,061 just released the latest edition of the Good Country Index. 82 00:04:39,242 --> 00:04:42,882 I'll just give you a very quick glimpse of what's going on there. 83 00:04:44,258 --> 00:04:46,172 Finland came first. 84 00:04:47,705 --> 00:04:51,142 One of these days, somebody is going to invent a country ranking 85 00:04:51,142 --> 00:04:53,760 that does not have a Nordic country in the top ten. 86 00:04:53,760 --> 00:04:55,993 (Laughter) 87 00:04:56,584 --> 00:04:59,014 An index of modesty perhaps? 88 00:04:59,907 --> 00:05:03,177 Anyway well done Finland, seriously! It's absolutely great. 89 00:05:03,379 --> 00:05:05,581 And another rather interesting thing happened 90 00:05:05,581 --> 00:05:08,302 in this latest edition of the Good Country Index, 91 00:05:08,302 --> 00:05:12,932 and that was what you can see if you go slightly lower in the Index, 92 00:05:12,932 --> 00:05:15,746 that the United States of America 93 00:05:15,746 --> 00:05:20,332 has for various reasons sunk quite a long way since the last edition, 94 00:05:20,332 --> 00:05:23,315 and Russia for various reasons has risen. 95 00:05:23,315 --> 00:05:27,535 And we now have this peculiar situation where the USA and Russia, 96 00:05:27,535 --> 00:05:29,579 relative to the size of their economies, 97 00:05:29,579 --> 00:05:33,100 are neck and neck, quite a long way down the Index. 98 00:05:33,564 --> 00:05:37,351 It's like two mean kids holding hands at the edge of the playground 99 00:05:37,351 --> 00:05:39,433 and refusing to join the others. 100 00:05:39,433 --> 00:05:40,816 (Laughter) 101 00:05:40,816 --> 00:05:43,898 (Cheering) (Applause) 102 00:05:47,784 --> 00:05:50,566 But hey, it's an interesting result, 103 00:05:50,566 --> 00:05:52,752 but in the end, I'm afraid to say 104 00:05:52,752 --> 00:05:56,938 that the world hasn't changed very much since the first one came out in 2014. 105 00:05:57,452 --> 00:06:02,178 It's still: America first, Britain first, Russia first, Germany first. 106 00:06:03,077 --> 00:06:06,150 And in a way, I understand that. I don't have a problem with it. 107 00:06:06,150 --> 00:06:09,052 I mean after all, if you are elected to run a country, 108 00:06:09,052 --> 00:06:12,524 it's pretty obvious that you put that country's interests first. 109 00:06:12,856 --> 00:06:16,611 But what I find rather demoralising about those kinds of sentiments 110 00:06:16,611 --> 00:06:20,081 is the implication that everybody else has to come last. 111 00:06:20,418 --> 00:06:22,136 And this is what I dispute. 112 00:06:22,136 --> 00:06:24,223 I think we can all come first. 113 00:06:25,153 --> 00:06:28,527 A nice thing about the job I've been doing for the last 20 years or so, 114 00:06:28,527 --> 00:06:30,392 advising governments around the world 115 00:06:30,392 --> 00:06:33,322 and trying out real policies in the real world, 116 00:06:33,322 --> 00:06:34,961 is that it's perfectly possible 117 00:06:34,961 --> 00:06:39,103 to harmonise your domestic and your international responsibilities. 118 00:06:39,103 --> 00:06:41,301 You can do the right thing for your own people, 119 00:06:41,301 --> 00:06:44,560 and you can do the right thing for humanity at the same time 120 00:06:44,560 --> 00:06:46,472 without sacrificing yourself. 121 00:06:46,472 --> 00:06:49,341 And the funny thing is it makes better policies. 122 00:06:49,341 --> 00:06:52,348 This is something that most governments have simply never tried. 123 00:06:53,463 --> 00:06:57,155 So, on to the second thing that's stopping the world working: 124 00:06:57,155 --> 00:07:01,343 the slightly more complicated issue of the behaviour of us humans. 125 00:07:01,975 --> 00:07:03,716 Well, to get started on this, 126 00:07:03,716 --> 00:07:05,103 I thought it'd be interesting 127 00:07:05,103 --> 00:07:07,550 to try to find out how many people in the world 128 00:07:07,550 --> 00:07:10,654 already agree with some of these basic principles, 129 00:07:10,654 --> 00:07:14,361 the ones outlined behind the Good Country Index. 130 00:07:14,361 --> 00:07:16,225 So Robert and I did some research, 131 00:07:16,225 --> 00:07:20,153 and we discovered that no less than 10% of the world's population 132 00:07:20,153 --> 00:07:23,716 appears to fully share the principles of the Good Country, 133 00:07:23,716 --> 00:07:28,436 the idea that countries should collaborate and cooperate a great deal more 134 00:07:28,436 --> 00:07:30,930 and compete a tiny bit less. 135 00:07:30,930 --> 00:07:35,925 This is great news. Ten percent, that's 760 million people. 136 00:07:36,295 --> 00:07:39,832 If that were a nation, that would be the third largest nation on the planet 137 00:07:39,832 --> 00:07:41,564 after China and India. 138 00:07:42,149 --> 00:07:45,086 And I have to admit that when those numbers came out, 139 00:07:45,086 --> 00:07:46,786 I got very excited. 140 00:07:47,090 --> 00:07:48,523 But then on mature reflection, 141 00:07:48,523 --> 00:07:51,543 I realised that, actually, the counterpart of that 142 00:07:51,543 --> 00:07:56,229 is that 90% of the people in the world don't agree with that proposition, 143 00:07:56,341 --> 00:07:59,252 and I think if one was going to take this challenge seriously, 144 00:07:59,252 --> 00:08:01,624 one has to focus on the 90%. 145 00:08:01,894 --> 00:08:06,274 It's not enough just to sell messages to the people who already agree with you 146 00:08:06,274 --> 00:08:09,688 and try to make them make tiny tweaks in their behaviour 147 00:08:09,688 --> 00:08:12,493 because frankly, it's too late for that. 148 00:08:12,493 --> 00:08:14,214 We are in too much of a hurry. 149 00:08:14,227 --> 00:08:16,919 We need big change, and we need it very soon. 150 00:08:16,919 --> 00:08:18,984 In fact, we need it right now. 151 00:08:19,571 --> 00:08:24,311 So how can we deeply educate the majority of the world's population 152 00:08:24,311 --> 00:08:27,515 to behave in a way which is more friendly to the world we live in 153 00:08:27,515 --> 00:08:29,474 and more friendly to each other? 154 00:08:29,707 --> 00:08:32,183 Because, by the way, when I was speaking of trolls, 155 00:08:32,183 --> 00:08:36,610 of course it reminded me of this strange idea that emerged recently, 156 00:08:36,610 --> 00:08:38,452 and I don't know where it came from, 157 00:08:38,918 --> 00:08:41,857 that the people who care more about local things 158 00:08:41,857 --> 00:08:44,592 and the people like me who care more about global things 159 00:08:44,592 --> 00:08:46,174 should be enemies. 160 00:08:46,186 --> 00:08:48,217 Who thought of this idea? 161 00:08:48,217 --> 00:08:51,205 This is the most dangerous idea in the world at the moment, 162 00:08:51,205 --> 00:08:55,024 and I think we should all look out for it and challenge it whenever we hear it. 163 00:08:55,035 --> 00:08:57,194 The people who care more about local things 164 00:08:57,194 --> 00:09:00,584 and the people who care more about global things shouldn't be enemies. 165 00:09:00,584 --> 00:09:02,392 They should be working together. 166 00:09:02,392 --> 00:09:04,941 We should be glad that each other exists. 167 00:09:04,941 --> 00:09:08,397 There isn't time for this kind of childish tribalism. 168 00:09:08,397 --> 00:09:10,913 We need to get on and fix things. 169 00:09:11,488 --> 00:09:13,395 Well anyway, as I was saying, 170 00:09:14,008 --> 00:09:18,732 the 90% need to be fundamentally educated in a different way. 171 00:09:19,092 --> 00:09:21,883 And I started looking at some of the websites of the NGOs 172 00:09:21,883 --> 00:09:24,637 and the campaigning organisations and the charities, 173 00:09:24,637 --> 00:09:27,721 and I began to notice there was a common theme emerging. 174 00:09:27,891 --> 00:09:29,508 There was a sentence, 175 00:09:29,508 --> 00:09:32,156 which in one form or another kept on cropping up. 176 00:09:32,156 --> 00:09:33,917 The sentence was something like this: 177 00:09:35,073 --> 00:09:39,333 "And we should leave the world in a better state for our children." 178 00:09:40,679 --> 00:09:44,622 And I've tried to read this sentence about 93 times in different places. 179 00:09:44,622 --> 00:09:46,587 I began thinking to myself, 180 00:09:47,550 --> 00:09:49,969 "You know, that's pretty arrogant really." 181 00:09:49,969 --> 00:09:52,735 The idea you could take something huge like climate change, 182 00:09:52,735 --> 00:09:56,172 a huge systemic problem or conflict or migration 183 00:09:56,172 --> 00:09:59,992 that's taken billions of people centuries to perpetrate, 184 00:09:59,992 --> 00:10:02,352 and you are going to fix it before you check out? 185 00:10:02,352 --> 00:10:03,488 (Laughter) 186 00:10:03,488 --> 00:10:06,019 It's this kind of arrogance and impatience 187 00:10:06,019 --> 00:10:08,369 that causes more problems than it solves. 188 00:10:08,621 --> 00:10:12,193 If we only have the nerve, if we only have the courage 189 00:10:12,193 --> 00:10:13,850 to give it one generation, 190 00:10:13,850 --> 00:10:17,360 we can fix everything and we can fix it for good. 191 00:10:17,976 --> 00:10:20,486 Because every single day that passes, 192 00:10:20,486 --> 00:10:23,402 humanity has an opportunity to start again. 193 00:10:23,938 --> 00:10:27,695 Because every single day that passes, new children are born, 194 00:10:27,695 --> 00:10:30,105 and they can learn in new ways. 195 00:10:30,105 --> 00:10:33,272 So there is a solution to every single challenge facing humanity; 196 00:10:33,272 --> 00:10:34,745 it's called education. 197 00:10:34,745 --> 00:10:37,365 But we need to do it in a new way and a different way 198 00:10:37,366 --> 00:10:40,836 and a much more ambitious way than we've done it before. 199 00:10:40,836 --> 00:10:43,585 Imagine if you will, a test tube rack 200 00:10:43,585 --> 00:10:46,957 of the sort you probably had when you studied science at school. 201 00:10:47,422 --> 00:10:49,628 And in this test tube rack made of wood, 202 00:10:49,628 --> 00:10:53,114 there are 7, 8, 10, I don't know, little glass test tubes, 203 00:10:53,114 --> 00:10:55,861 and each one contains a different coloured liquid. 204 00:10:55,861 --> 00:11:00,646 And each one of those liquids is a vaccine, an educational vaccine 205 00:11:00,646 --> 00:11:04,083 against the behaviours that cause climate change, conflicts, 206 00:11:04,083 --> 00:11:08,498 human right abuses, terrorism, migration, pandemics and all the rest of it. 207 00:11:08,498 --> 00:11:12,390 And if we administer these educational vaccines to all of our children, 208 00:11:12,390 --> 00:11:16,696 in the next generation, they will be incapable of continuing the behaviours 209 00:11:16,696 --> 00:11:19,081 that we have indulged in for so long. 210 00:11:19,802 --> 00:11:23,149 If we teach our children cultural anthropology at the age of six - 211 00:11:23,149 --> 00:11:25,935 it's a wonderful subject for six-year-olds - 212 00:11:25,935 --> 00:11:30,385 they'd grow up taking a scientific pride in understanding cultural differences. 213 00:11:30,657 --> 00:11:31,814 They are immunised 214 00:11:31,814 --> 00:11:35,096 against the kind of ignorance that leads to prejudice and intolerance. 215 00:11:35,096 --> 00:11:36,112 I know that one works 216 00:11:36,112 --> 00:11:39,403 because I experimented it on my children, and it works a charm. 217 00:11:39,403 --> 00:11:40,894 (Laughter) 218 00:11:41,571 --> 00:11:44,670 If we want to lessen the speed of climate change, 219 00:11:44,670 --> 00:11:47,526 we need to teach our children oceanography and meteorology, 220 00:11:47,526 --> 00:11:48,601 and then maybe one day 221 00:11:48,601 --> 00:11:51,314 they'll switch off the damn light when they leave bedroom. 222 00:11:51,314 --> 00:11:52,344 (Laugher) 223 00:11:52,344 --> 00:11:56,202 We need to teach our children hygiene so that there is less disease. 224 00:11:56,202 --> 00:11:59,568 We need to teach them to meditate so there is less mental illness 225 00:11:59,568 --> 00:12:02,680 and they learn to have more empathy and understanding and kindness 226 00:12:02,680 --> 00:12:04,647 towards everybody else. 227 00:12:04,647 --> 00:12:06,121 There are so many subjects. 228 00:12:06,121 --> 00:12:08,166 I can't decide which ones they should be. 229 00:12:08,166 --> 00:12:09,435 What I think we need to do 230 00:12:09,435 --> 00:12:12,325 is to have a big global discussion on the internet, 231 00:12:12,325 --> 00:12:14,556 where everybody puts in their own idea 232 00:12:14,556 --> 00:12:17,104 about what should be the next set of values 233 00:12:17,104 --> 00:12:19,784 that we're going to teach the next generation of children 234 00:12:19,784 --> 00:12:22,261 so they can run towards the global challenges 235 00:12:22,261 --> 00:12:25,460 instead of running away from them as we've done. 236 00:12:26,862 --> 00:12:28,658 And we can do this. 237 00:12:29,253 --> 00:12:32,274 Next year, it will be my aim, my ambition, 238 00:12:32,274 --> 00:12:35,435 to have one hundred ministers of education signing up 239 00:12:35,435 --> 00:12:38,632 to this new global compact of educational values. 240 00:12:38,932 --> 00:12:40,761 UNESCO has already signed a letter 241 00:12:40,761 --> 00:12:44,181 saying they would like to support this if we can get it going. 242 00:12:44,688 --> 00:12:48,077 And if you have any doubts about whether it's possible 243 00:12:48,078 --> 00:12:52,072 for humanity to engage in such a big common project 244 00:12:52,072 --> 00:12:54,496 despite all of our cultural differences, 245 00:12:54,496 --> 00:12:58,895 well, just have a think about the United Nations' charter 246 00:12:59,613 --> 00:13:03,175 or the human rights documentation. 247 00:13:03,175 --> 00:13:06,045 Have a read if you haven't read it for a while. 248 00:13:06,045 --> 00:13:09,306 These are the most beautiful documents ever produced by humanity, 249 00:13:09,306 --> 00:13:11,429 and they really give you faith 250 00:13:11,429 --> 00:13:13,388 because they remind you as you read them 251 00:13:13,388 --> 00:13:14,887 that we are capable 252 00:13:14,887 --> 00:13:19,033 of behaving like a single species inhabiting a single planet. 253 00:13:19,428 --> 00:13:22,506 We can do it if we really want to and if we do it at scale. 254 00:13:22,506 --> 00:13:23,554 The good news is 255 00:13:23,554 --> 00:13:26,638 it's more about joining up the dots than starting from scratch. 256 00:13:26,638 --> 00:13:28,526 Because there're hundreds and hundreds 257 00:13:28,526 --> 00:13:31,928 if not thousands of projects around the world at the moment, 258 00:13:32,279 --> 00:13:35,199 finding and experimenting different ways of educating children 259 00:13:35,199 --> 00:13:36,994 so they behave better in the future. 260 00:13:36,994 --> 00:13:41,390 The trouble is they're mostly single topics and in single countries. 261 00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:43,981 There's no time for doing it slowly now. 262 00:13:43,981 --> 00:13:47,381 We need to do it big, and we need to do it in one go. 263 00:13:48,850 --> 00:13:51,968 Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, 264 00:13:51,968 --> 00:13:54,625 is beginning to discover and beginning to show us 265 00:13:54,625 --> 00:13:59,481 how very difficult it is to persuade grown-ups to change their behaviour. 266 00:14:00,183 --> 00:14:02,150 But the simple fact of the matter is 267 00:14:02,420 --> 00:14:07,453 that we can see that a lot of children have got the right attitude, 268 00:14:07,453 --> 00:14:09,614 but they don't have the solutions. 269 00:14:09,839 --> 00:14:11,688 Some adults have the solutions, 270 00:14:11,688 --> 00:14:14,638 but they definitely don't have the right attitude. 271 00:14:15,163 --> 00:14:19,601 And so, guess what, it's another necessity for collaboration - 272 00:14:19,601 --> 00:14:22,472 the children and the grown-ups working together. 273 00:14:23,873 --> 00:14:28,233 We all have to think very hard now about being better human beings. 274 00:14:29,033 --> 00:14:34,155 And that's about being better citizens, both locally and globally, 275 00:14:34,771 --> 00:14:38,971 but it's also, perhaps mainly, about being better ancestors. 276 00:14:39,379 --> 00:14:42,940 If we can do that, we can make the world work. 277 00:14:44,027 --> 00:14:45,024 Thank you. 278 00:14:45,024 --> 00:14:47,978 (Applause) (Cheering)